Worthy of His Steel
by Honorat
Summary: New Chapter! Jack meet Will. Will meet Jack. Quick! Separate them before somebody gets killed! More of the epic of the blacksmith and the pirate. More movie novelization and missing scenes. We have rejoined our regularly scheduled program.
1. To Miss An Appointment

Worthy of His Steel, Prologue: To Miss an Appointment

By Honorat

Rating: K

Disclaimer: One good fanfic is not enough to redeem an author of a lifetime of making no money.

Summary: Jack does his best not to meet that dawn appointment with the gallows. Everyone has an opinion about that. More from Norrington, Governor Swann, and Elizabeth. Elizabeth's near drowning catches up to her (based on personal experience of how being in shock finally hits a person). This story begins where _Daring Rescue, Daring Escape_ ends. The focus will be on Will and Jack, but that will be the next chapter. More movie novelization and missing scenes.

Thank you, geek mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

To Miss an Appointment

Jack had only a split second to consider that perhaps he should have thought through this escape a little more thoroughly before his head crashed into the beam of the crane with all the force of a cannon hitting the dock. Then he was enveloped in pain, struggling to concentrate on not letting go of the rope as light flashed behind his eyes and blackness came and went in waves. If he'd not been wearing his hat, he surely would have cracked his skull like an egg and saved the Royal Navy the trouble and expense of a rope. As it was, he was merely going in circles, spinning out of control on the end of that cable while the great crane whipped about—nothing but a target at which redcoats could take potshots. He'd had better days.

* * *

Below, on the dock, Commodore Norrington found himself in the enviable position of having Elizabeth Swann in his arms clinging to him. Unfortunately, he had no time to enjoy the sensation. His men were picking themselves back up after Sparrow's wild flight had landed them all in a heap, and the pirate himself was being flung about the sky like a particularly noxious piece of cargo. Everyone was stunned, mouths open, staring in confusion at the unprecedented sight. Surprisingly, it was Governor Swann who first recovered his wits.

"Now will you shoot him?" the governor cried in exasperation. The marines responded instantly by aiming their rifles at the flying target.

"Open fire!" the commodore bellowed, berating himself mentally for his tardy reaction.

The docks reverberated with the thunder of shots. Overhead, Sparrow cried out, but Norrington could not tell whether he'd been struck. Certainly the man continued to cling tenaciously to the flailing cable, so if he had been injured, it could not have been too badly. A second volley and then a third rang out, and still that wretched pirate had not been blown out of the sky.

In disbelief, Norrington watched as Jack Sparrow arched his body out from the path of the cable and managed to gain purchase for his feet on the arm of the second crane further up the dock. Amidst the blasts of rifle fire, the pirate lost his grip on the rope and wavered precariously on the narrow beam. For a moment the commodore was sure Jack Sparrow was going to remove the necessity of pursuit and plummet to his death on the stone quay, but contrary to all laws of probability, his movement steadied and he did not fall.

Unbelievable! The man had to be part cat, with at least two fewer lives already. He was actually going to get away!

"On his heels!" Norrington shouted, shoving Elizabeth into her father's arms and setting off at a dead run. There was no way in God's universe he was going to let that pirate escape.

Never taking his eyes off his quarry, the commodore led the stampede of marines up the sloping ramp from the dock. Sparrow had pressed himself up against the support of the crane. Now if the man would just stay there, one of his marines would eventually get a clear shot. There was nowhere else for him to go, after all. But just as that comfortable thought formed, Norrington saw the pirate throw a loop of the chain binding his wrists over the guy rope that supported the crane. Then, gripping the chain with both hands, the insane pirate leapt off the beam and slid rapidly down the rope, legs waving wildly.

A troop of marines was cresting the edge of the quay right behind Sparrow, but the pirate was still ahead of them when he hit the ground already running towards the bridge that led from the harbour front into Port Royal. Norrington's men quickly dropped into formation, each forward marksmen down on one knee, clearing the firing lines for those in the rear. Steadily, they aimed and fired. Through an exodus of startled civilians diving for cover, Jack Sparrow bolted for the town in a hail of shots spanging off the stone arch of the bridge and spattering chunks of broken rock that flew by his head. Flailing his arms as though to ward off annoying insects, the pirate managed to dodge any lethal contact with the projectiles, finally gaining cover behind the buildings at the edge of the town.

Since firing at walls was futile, the marines shouldered their weapons and set out in hot pursuit.

Commodore Norrington arrived on the quay in time to see Sparrow disappear. Around him, the air was blue with smoke and reeked of saltpeter and sulpher. The situation was a disgrace. An entire company of marines had failed to incapacitate that single man. Norrington was sure he was getting a headache. Still glaring in the direction of the vanished Sparrow, he paused to speak to Lieutenant Gillette. Mr. Murtogg and Mr. Mulroy accompanied the lieutenant, but the rest of the marines rushed on by into the town.

"Gillette," the commodore ordered, "Mr. Sparrow has a dawn appointment with the gallows." He turned to look at the officer, his eyes hard and determined. "I would hate for him to miss it."

Gillette met his gaze, equally resolute, and nodded. Gesturing for Murtogg and Mulroy to follow him, the young lieutenant jogged off to organize the search.

* * *

Weatherby Swann lost interest in the pirate hunt the instant that terrible man was no longer a threat to his daughter. He only hoped the marines would find and kill the wretch as swiftly as possible.

Turning to Elizabeth he gathered her into his arms. She was trembling, and her skin felt cold and clammy. Her face was pale, her eyes dark and shocked. He realized afresh that he could have lost her this day, that she had nearly drowned. Of course, the reaction to her brush with death must be setting in. Now he had to get her home and warm and resting before she caught her death of cold.

"You! Boy!" Governor Swann called to one of the wide-eyed urchins who'd been joyfully observing the commotion. The child padded over to the governor on dusty bare feet.

"Yessuh?"

"Here's a half crown," Swann waved a coin in front of the boy's wide-eyed face, "if you'll run to the Fort as fast as you can and find the governor's carriage. Tell the coachman to bring it down to me at the harbour. Can you do that?"

"Yessuh!" the boy agreed enthusiastically, holding out a grubby palm for the unexpected wealth. Secreting his loot about his small person, the child set off at a sprint on the path up to Fort Charles.

Governor Swann wrapped Elizabeth more tightly in his coat and held her as if she were a little girl again. He wished this blasted fog would lift and the warm sun would return. He wished the carriage were already here.

Finally, the gray horses clattered down the narrow cobble street to the quay drawing the Swann carriage. While the footman held the fretting animals' heads, Governor Swann bundled Elizabeth inside, tucking lap robes about her. The fact that she did not object to his cosseting worried him. Seating himself next to her, he directed the driver to "Spring 'em."

For a second time, citizens had to dash for cover as the high-spirited animals charged through the town scattering sparks from their steel-shod hooves.

Out of the chill breeze and swathed in warmth again, Elizabeth began to revive a little. Her pulse grew less tumultuous, her colour seemed better and she began to focus on the scenery flashing by the carriage windows. Her father was relieved. It was far more like his daughter to be prancing about the docks defending pirates than for her to be so pale and silent. Much as he deplored her want of conduct, the sight of Elizabeth being so unnaturally passive had frightened him.

"Are you feeling better, now?" he asked her.

"Yes, thank you," she smiled faintly at him.

"Thank God, you're safe," he told her. "What ever happened?"

Elizabeth frowned a little, trying to remember. "I was standing on the wall of the fort. Commodore Norrington was asking me to marry him. But I couldn't breathe. That corset . . ." she trailed off.

Governor Swann felt a mixture of emotions. Delight that Norrington had addressed his daughter on the topic of matrimony. Horror that his gift should have been responsible for her near tragedy.

"I must have fainted and fallen, because the next thing I knew, I was on the dock coughing up water, with Jack Sparrow holding me," she continued. "I imagine you know the rest."

* * *

Elizabeth was not ready for her father's questions regarding James Norrington, so she turned away from him, leaned her head against the cushioned interior and closed her eyes. The ruse worked, for her father patted her hand and didn't press her any further.

At the edge of town, the carriage had to slow to move past a naval barricade. Apparently Jack Sparrow was still on the loose, and all routes in and out of town were being guarded. Elizabeth felt a little relief. As angry as she was with Jack Sparrow, she didn't want him to be hanged.

Her father had never allowed her to attend a hanging. When she had protested that the town children were permitted to view this high entertainment, her father had agreed that this was exactly his point. Hangings were too vulgar. But when she had been eleven years old, she had persuaded Will to help her sneak in to one. At first she'd been caught up in the excitement of the crowd, eager to see this desperate criminal, thrilled with the spectacle. Then the marines had dragged out the man who was to be executed.

He had not looked at all frightening. Instead, he had looked terrified, himself. Even to her child's eyes, he had seemed very young. On the scaffold he had struggled futilely with the large men who held him. She had heard his high, scared voice pleading for mercy. But the gallows was not a place for mercy, and the unfortunate thief had been forced into the noose. The drums had drilled their cold overture to death, and the lever had been pulled.

The thief had not been a heavy man. His own weight had not been enough to break his neck, so his death had been a drawn out and agonizing one. Elizabeth had been horrified. She didn't know what she had expected, but it was not this.

Unable to endure the sight any longer, she'd fled from the fort, Will following anxiously concerned. Reaching the privacy of the tangled jungle beyond the town, she had been sick, and then she had cried. Will had been uncertain what to do, finally patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. He'd apologized over and over for taking her there, but she knew it had been her own fault. He'd tried to justify the hanging—the man had broken the law knowing the punishment for his crime. However, Elizabeth could only hear the condemned man's begging voice, could only see his pale panicked face and then his violently twitching body.

That hanging had haunted her nightmares for months. She had never again asked her father to take her to an execution.

That the legendary Captain Jack Sparrow should meet his demise for saving her life was beyond impossible. Even if he was despicable. He could languish in the gaol for a while—or in the stocks where children could throw rotten food and stones at him. But not hanging. He was not a large man either. She thought he would not die easily. However, perhaps he would make good his escape. Perhaps, this once, Commodore Norrington, the Scourge of Piracy, would make a mistake, and this pirate would get away. As much as she'd like to slap the man's face, Elizabeth hoped he would.

TBC


	2. Pirate Attack

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 1: Pirate Attack

By Honorat

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: I don't have permission to be aboard POTC, mate. I'm sorry, it's just - it's such a pretty boat. Ship.

Summary: Finally, here is the epic of the blacksmith and the pirate. It will end on the floor of a forge, but it begins on a dusty path on the way from the governor's mansion. What was Will doing while Elizabeth was attempting to drown and Jack was attempting to escape? Read on to find out. Contains a bit of a drabble I wrote once—"Broken". Historical trivia: there was at least one volcano erupting in the Caribbean in 1719. More movie novelization and missing scenes. This one starts off the edge of the map.

Thank you, **Geek Mama**, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

Pirate Attack

By Honorat

Will Turner trudged down the dusty road towards the town, feeling unaccountably wretched. This was more than his usual pang of loss when he gave up a blade of his own making. It was as if he forged a sliver of his soul into each sword he crafted, and the separation always bled. But this other, darker emotion, lay over that familiar pain like a pall.

He should be pleased, he told himself. Governor Swann had admired his work, even if the man still believed that Master Brown was the craftsman responsible.

He had given his best skill and care to the making of that sword. The weapon had been a thing of surpassing beauty—Will was too honest to undervalue his own work. The glowing steel had sung under his hammer as he had folded and forged the slender blade. The balance, the grace, the indomitable strength of that sword he knew as he knew the sinews of his own arm. A worthy gift for a worthy man.

Commodore Norrrington was a man who would know how to value such a sword. He imagined the commodore, resplendent in his new uniform, drawing that slim ribbon of steel—the morning sun flashing like lightning along that damascened blade. But he, Will Turner, while worthy to forge that sword, was not welcome to attend such a ceremony, not even to be credited with his own craftsmanship. The credit belonged to Master Brown, as he himself did. The terms of his indenture grated on his soul like irons today.

Almost of their own volition, his feet left the main road that would return him to his routine and took another familiar path that led up into the hills. It would do him no good to enter the forge in this temper. A swordsmith had to be clear in head and heart to work molten steel into art. Any work he accomplished today would be as murky as his mind—fit only to scrap and smelt down.

Will began to run, scrambling up the brushy hillside on the winding narrow trail. He was panting by the time he broke out onto a rocky ledge overlooking the bay. This had always been his secret place. The place where he came when the drudgery of his days grew to be more than his soul could bear. When he could no longer endure the fine customers to whom he might as well have been invisible—another moving piece of machinery among the gears of the smithy. When the desire for some sort of freedom he could not even define twisted in his bones like torture.

This was the place where he came to remember his mother, faded lovely memories that still ached like an old wound with both grief and joy. Her courage, her laughter, her strength still inspired him. When he should have been her support, she had encouraged him. She had gone into that night of death like a warrior having fought a good fight—undaunted, thinking only of him, never of herself. When she had died, the last light had fled his world leaving only the flat gray landscape of the future. He still missed her fiercely although it had been eight years since she'd died.

And this was also where he came to wonder what had become of his father of whom he had so few memories. Each one was a treasure, a moment of pure happiness before the farewells that had been so hard. He remembered his father's laugh. The smell of the sea. His mother's gladness. Strong arms swinging him into the air. Going fishing, once, like the other boys. Large calloused hands showing him how to tie a bowline. A rare, travel-stained letter in a cramped, awkward hand. Bits of odd trinkets from faraway places. All gone now. Lost on the sea like the man himself. He wished he knew what kind of person his father had been. Wished he knew anything at all about him. Wished he knew why his father had never come home—what had held him here in the Caribbean so much more powerfully than his wife and son could hold him at home in England.

Today, he came here again, unsure of the reason, knowing only that he needed this place and this time to think. Across the horseshoe of the bay, he could see Fort Charles and the winding train of carriages arriving for the ceremony. One of them would be the Swann carriage. Elizabeth—Miss Swann—would be at that festive event. She would see the great man honoured, not the swordsmith behind that magnificent blade. As was only right and proper. What had that delicate, aristocratic beauty to do with the fire and sweat and iron ore of a forge?

The answer was nothing, of course. Her father had made that perfectly clear. Man to man. When Will had been sixteen and she a starry-eyed lass of fourteen. She was a young lady, blossoming from a skinny, coltish urchin into beauty that made him catch his breath. He was only a blacksmith. A common labourer, an apprentice whose work and whose name did not even belong to him. His father had been a common sailor, his mother a seamstress. Oh, the governor had not said anything so harsh, but the hard truth had hidden, a palimpsest, behind the kindly, patronizing words.

He'd fled to this rock that day, not understanding why that obvious truth had shattered him like a wrongly tempered blade against obdurate stone.

He understood now. This unyielding bit of earth was where he always came when he needed to wrestle his rebellious heart into submission—a battle he always won, because he had to. To lose it would be to lose everything, to discard all that he was, for all that he could never be.

On this high promontory over the sea, he threw himself to the ground and buried his face in his arms. The wind, like an old friend, caressed his bowed head and fluttered the fabric of his sleeves. Somehow the peace of this place, the beauty of the sea, the limitlessness of the horizon, the salt-tinged breath of the wind always calmed his heart, cooled the heat of his face, gave him the courage and the strength he needed to walk back down this hill into the narrow confines of the life that had been charted for him by well-meaning strangers so long ago.

He had been fortunate, he told himself. Not every apprentice found the capacity to transcend mere employment in the life into which he had been bound. But Will had gradually come to realize that the ore in his hands whispered to his imagination, the flames of the forge burned in his heart, the shock of hammer on anvil rang in his soul like a great bell. In his servitude, he had found his gift. The hours of backbreaking labour to produce plowshares and gratings, nails and hinges, were transcended by hours in which he felt neither pain nor fatigue nor tedium as his genius swept through his art to create a sword of exquisite beauty and strength.

It would be enough. It had to be enough. He would pour the banked fires of his heart into the steel hearts of blades that cut like unrequited love.

As Will lay on the moss-covered rock, his breathing slowed and his pulse calmed. He felt as though he were becoming stone, like lava cooling until its surface no longer crumpled to let its fretful molten core bleed fire upon the earth. He would be impervious—soon.

And then the wind changed. Its warm fragrant breath twisted and crept down on him like the chill exhalation of death. The gently fluttering foliage shrank back against the cliffs as if in fear. Will raised his head and opened his eyes, surprised to see fog rolling into the bay where only sunlight had sparkled moments before. Uneasy memory stirred, but before he could pinpoint the source, mist settled heavily around him and the feeling was gone.

The town below disappeared and Fort Charles faded to a ghostly citadel on the other side of the bay. Will felt even more alone, as though he were the only soul alive in all this shrunken gray world. He embraced the loneliness, wrapping himself in it, resigning himself to it. Only in acceptance would he find serenity.

As always, Will gained his victory, crushing all revolts of the spirit, repressing all mutinous desires. His mother had always been his example in this—the art of gracefully seizing what happiness was given when all else was denied.

Having achieved some measure of peace, Will arose, dusted himself off, and retraced his steps back down the hillside. After all, his work would not finish itself on its own. When he reached the main road, he was startled to have to wait as a contingent of marines quick-marched by him. As he continued his descent into the town, he could tell some sort of disturbance was going on. There was a subtle wrongness to the usual hum of business. And above the clatter of cartwheels on cobbles, the clamour of poultry and livestock, and the loud voices of bartering tradesmen, rose the shouted orders of officers and the rumble of military boots. Something had happened while he had been gone.

Catching sight of Old Man Sorby, Will quickened his pace. For a hard-of-hearing man, Old Sorby always knew the latest news. "Mr. Sorby," he called loudly, seizing the hunched figure by the arm. "What's afoot?"

The elderly man turned, wide-eyed. "Murder and mayhem, my lad," he exclaimed delightedly. "Murder and mayhem!" Nothing pleased Old Sorby more than being the first to impart bad news.

"What?" exclaimed Will. "Mr. Sorby, talk sense! What is going on?"

"Pirate attack, boy! Pirate attack!" Sorby explained with relish.

Will felt his blood freeze. Memory swept over him, blanking out the sounds of the street like storm winds thundering in sails. For a moment he was twelve years old again, stumbling and running along scuppers draining blood like sea water, hearing the crack of pistols, the grate of steel against bone, the screaming and screaming that went on and on until he thought he must go deaf or mad. He remembered a hulking figure of terror tossing the twitching body of a young girl over the ship's rail. She haunted his nightmares still, floating like a broken doll amidst the flames and wreckage, the water, red with her own blood, carrying away the parasol of which she had been so proud. He had dived into the sea to save her, knowing she could not swim—not knowing it was already too late. He had remained with her in the sea, clinging to a blasted piece of hull; not able to let her lifeless body slip away; not knowing he was the only survivor of that attack. Then the ship had exploded and the world had gone dark.

The world was going dark again as guilt and rage detonated afresh in his heart.

"Mr. Turner? Mr. Turner!" Old Sorby's voice finally made it through the bloody haze in his head. "Will, lad. Are ye alright?"

Will stared wildly into Old Sorby's rheumy eyes, recognition gradually seeping back into his dazed expression. His tanned face was gray-cast, and sweat chilled on his forehead.

"Where are they?" he demanded of the old man, the ice in his tone like a cold blade. He was no weakling child now to weep and flee. He had forged his body and his skill like folded steel for just this moment. "Tell me!" Will gripped Old Sorby's arms and shook him.

Frightened by the ferocity his words had aroused in this normally gentle boy, the old man stammered, "It's not r-really a 'they' at all. I-It's an ''e.'"

"What?"

"Jus' one," Old Sorby spoke rapidly, trying to diffuse the unexpected cannon he had touched off. "Really, there's no need t' get all worked up. The Navy and them marines were right on 'im. They'll 'ave 'im cornered in no time, jus' see if they don't."

"Just one?" Will felt his racing heart calm a little, and he let the old man go.

"Aye," Old Sorby chuckled in relief. The lad had worried him there for a minute. "But 'e's caused an almighty ruckus for jus' one man."

"What did he do?"

"Do?" the old man exclaimed. "Why only fished the governor's daughter right out o' the drink, and then when they tried t' arrest 'im, why bless me if 'e didn't take the lass 'ostage!"

"Elizabeth!" Will breathed her name in horror. Never in his wildest nightmares had he imagined that she was endangered by this "pirate attack." She had been at the fort—surely the safest place in Port Royal!

Noting the return of that dangerous fury to the young man's eyes, Sorby hastened to add. "Oh, 'e let 'er go quick enough! 'E's jus' on the loose on 'is own now."

She was safe, then. Will felt his knees go weak. Thank God. Nothing must ever be allowed to harm Elizabeth—Miss Swann. He would kill any man who disturbed her peace.

However, in this case, the Navy was after that pirate. Good. He could trust Commodore Norrington to capture the despicable vermin and hang him by his lousy neck until his face turned black and bloated—and then leave him out to rot, his bones picked clean by scavengers. At that, it was better than the man deserved. Pirates! God how he hated the breed!

TBC

* * *

Thank you **Captain Sarah Sparrow** for your faithful reviewing. I'll try to keep up the work, though RL and research is slowing me down.

Thanks also to **ellennar** and **vickevire**. I hope you enjoy this new chapter on Will.

And where would my muse be without the inspiration from **Captain Tish**! I'm glad you like the extra details. This chapter is all extra details!


	3. Unrestrained Piracy

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 2: Unrestrained Piracy

By Honorat

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Well, excuse me if I haven't resigned myself to not owning POTC just yet.

Summary: More of the epic of the blacksmith and the pirate. Jack meet Donkey. Donkey meet Jack. Complaints about the treatment of animals in this episode may be directed to Captain Jack Sparrow, the _Black Pearl_, the Caribbean or possibly anywhere else in the world. More movie novelization and missing scenes.

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one. And thanks to Rennie for suggestions as well.

* * *

Unrestrained Piracy

If he was going to capture that pirate, Lieutenant Gillette knew he would have to act swiftly. Delegating Murtogg and Mulroy to carry orders, he arranged for blockades on the roads and paths out of town. Then the lieutenant set patrols for the waterfront—the man had said he'd come to commandeer a ship. Finally, he organized units, each composed of eight men, to search the town.

"You will find Jack Sparrow," he informed the men, "if you have to enter every single building in Port Royal."

Returning from the docks, Mr. Murtogg trotted up to him carrying a bundle of fabric. "Here's his coat—that Jack Sparrow's." He offered the item to the lieutenant. "Will you be wanting dogs, sir?"

That might not be a bad idea. If Sparrow had managed to make it out of the town before the ways had been cut off, dogs might be their only chance of tracking him down.

"See to it," he ordered.

"Yes, sir." Murtogg dashed off with Sparrow's coat to conscript a pair of hunting dogs.

All necessary action seemed to be in motion. Lieutenant Gillette headed to report to Commodore Norrington.

In general, Captain Jack Sparrow liked to do his escaping in the middle of crowds of people. Not only did they make it easier for him to blend in, but they made wonderful obstacles for his pursuers. In a panic, a good crowd could chain a herd of marines like an anchor to windward. However, today he'd just as soon the whole of Port Royal were home with the cholera. There were only so many shadows in which a man could skulk when it was the middle of the day. And these bloody over-sized bracelets he happened to be wearing made him stand out like a fox in a henhouse.

He could have been out of this pestilential town and well on his way to distant ports by now if he hadn't had to move so circumspectly, if he hadn't had to backtrack so many times, if sharp vulgar eyes hadn't kept spying the chains he was so carefully keeping silent, if loud treacherous voices hadn't kept bellowing, "'Ey! 'E's over 'ere!" And then he would have to turn and run, to slam into impossibly small spaces, to drag his own weight by sheer force of determination over walls he'd never imagined he could climb. To hide inside doorways until frantic householders drove him out with shrieks and broom handles. To dodge thrown refuse until he'd made it to an undisturbed street again. And then to do it all over again until the despair was almost monotonous.

Watching, always watching until he thought his eyes would burst into flames, for the first hint of red coats or blue with gold braid. Whose bright idea had it been, anyway, for him to come to the headquarters of the British Fleet in the Caribbean to commandeer a ship? He'd swear there were more soldiers here than citizens. Everywhere he tried to turn, there they'd be, quick-marching along in their little double columns, rifles at the ready, bayonets aimed, calling reports and orders back and forth, their blood-red uniforms a symbol of their intentions.

He'd slipped the entire contents of the harbourmaster's purse to a couple of local ne'er-do-well's in exchange for a disturbance started at one end of town while he ran for the other, but that had only bought him a little time—a little space to catch his breath, to reorient himself, to try to come up with a new plan. He needed to lose these shackles, and he needed to lose them now.

A shout rang out, followed by the clatter of military boots, and Jack cursed his luck to the deepest circle of hell. Sprinting up the street, he dodged under an archway and found himself in a quiet square with only a couple of women packing up the last of what looked like vegetables they'd brought to market. Halting before he caught their attention, he drew back into the shadows of the arch. But he could hear the marines approaching from several directions, and he knew he had only moments to choose a course of action. He drew his sword, just in case he chose the wrong one.

Frantically he scanned the ring of buildings. Several of them were within sight of the women; one of them had a promising looking staircase up the outside of it, but he'd never make it there unobserved. Right beside his archway, however, was a niche with a bronze sculpture of a blacksmith in it. With a flicker of movement, Jack squeezed his slender form into the thin space behind the statue. He was counting on no one imagining that space was there. It suited his perverse sense of humour to slip his sword into the brazen smith's open grip on the anvil—give the man something to be striking with that upraised hammer.

He was barely in time. One of the women turned, basket over her arm, and came towards the arch. Then a door across the square opened, and a man walked purposefully straight at Jack's hiding place. The pirate tensed. Had this man been watching out a window? But no. The man simply plodded his way through a flock of hens to the large double doors beside the niche. He pounded on the door; however, when no answer was forthcoming he started back across the square. Jack made a note that those doors likely concealed an empty room. And if the sign above told truth, that room would contain all the tools necessary for him to rid himself of his unwanted jewelry. If he could just have the moment of time he needed!

At that instant, a company of marines burst into the square, startling its inhabitants. The women glanced up from their produce and froze. A man wringing out a cloth on a doorstep looked up for a moment, then dismissed the intrusion and kept at his task. The first set of marines was met from the other direction by the group that had been chasing Jack, coming through the arch right by his hiding place. Jack ceased to breathe.

"Search upstairs!" one of the officers ordered, and Jack had a moment to be grateful he had been unable to explore that route. "Step lively men!"

The two groups split up and began combing the surrounding environs. None of them noticed the possible hiding place provided by the statue. There were advantages to being smaller than a marine, Jack thought smugly. They weren't evident when one was being yanked around by marines, but those benefits became extremely obvious when one was taking cover from marines. Men tended to search only those spaces in which they themselves would fit.

He winced as a marine jammed his bayonet into a barrel. Not being any too careful about the condition of their quarry, these men. If they found him, he'd be lucky if they'd leave enough of him to hang.

As the search party fanned away from his hiding place, Jack slowly drew his sword with a whisper of steel back through the bronze hand. Cautiously he peered around the statue's arm. No one was looking his way. Never taking his eyes off his pursuers on the far side of the square, Jack slithered out from his hiding space. Like a piece of shadow, cut loose from the stone walls, he glided down the steps. If any one had turned, they could have seen him. But the citizens were returning to their everyday business, ignoring the jogging marines in their midst and paying no attention to nefarious pirates.

He was going to make good his escape. Jack glanced up once, confirming his impression of the symbols on the sign above the door: a pair of tongs, a hammer, and an anvil; the neatly lettered name: J. Brown. Yes. He had found the smithy. Swiftly, the pirate reached for the rough wooden door. It opened with a hollow creak, and he ducked inside.

The transition from daylight to the dim interior blinded Jack for a moment. He froze just inside the doors, letting his eyes adjust, straining his remaining senses for any hint of threat. He was not alone in the room. Somewhere a large animal was breathing; he could hear the rustle of its feet as well as smell its acrid odor and the sweet hay scent of its feed. But overall the smithy was redolent of metal and fire and dust. Gradually the light creeping between the slats of the walls and the dim glow of the fire in the central forge illuminated the place for him.

The smithy was larger than it had seemed from the outside, extending back into several open rooms partitioned by great, smoke-blackened posts and beams. He could see no one in the building. Good. Jack re-sheathed his sword. Automatically, he catalogued all the exits: the one he had entered, two windows, but they were barred, and another door on the far side. He was standing, he realized, on the large stone platform of a loading dock that wrapped around one side of the room. A flat cart butted up against the platform and acting as a ramp was the nearest means down to the floor, its single set of wheels blocked to keep it from rolling.

The animal he'd heard proved to be a small gray donkey, down in a circular pit, harnessed to one of a crossed set of bars that turned a large set of gears, probably machinery to run the bellows. It paid no attention the pirate. Jack reflected that the indifference was mutual. He'd never had much to do with the lesser equines, hadn't even been near a horse in years. But the creature's movements would mask any noise he happened to make, so he was willing to tolerate its presence.

Overall, his impression of the smithy was one of order and discipline. Along one wall, cart wheels waited for their metal banding to be repaired. Scythes and plowshares and other farm equipment marched along another wall. One post was festooned with large and complicated padlocks. Racks on several other columns held swords. And Jack could see other esoteric objects neatly stored further back. Apparently Master J. Brown was an industrious and competent smith. He was also a well-equipped smith, Jack noted with satisfaction. The circles of the gears overhead were hung with a variety of hammers, each with its own arcane purpose. More tools were arranged about the forge. And in front of it sat a large, squat anvil. Perfect. He was, if he did say so himself, a genius.

Jack sauntered down the ramp and over to the workbench that surrounded the forge. On the wall beside the forge he noticed several iron mask-like objects hanging—instruments of punishment for people whose tongues wagged too freely about the wrong topics. The pirate gave an involuntary shudder. God, he hated civilization. He had to get out of these irons. He had to get out of this town.

Removing his hat from his still-wet head, he perched it on a smaller anvil on the tabletop and considered the array of equipment in front of him. A narrow-headed hammer caught his eye. That might about do the trick. He liberated it from its hook on the edge of the bench.

The success of his plan had almost led Jack to relax. Then, just as he was contemplating the best approach for demolishing his chains—Thunk! A noise from a dark corner of the smithy slammed him back to full alert. Jack whirled around, his ratted locks swinging, the strings of beads clinking. Someone was in this room! Someone he hadn't noticed. Dark eyes darting, the pirate peered into the gloomy recesses seeking the source of that sound.

It was immediately obvious why he hadn't spied the man at first. Tucked in behind a workbench in a dark corner, the short, rotund blacksmith sprawled loosely on a barrel, his head lolling on the stand for a large rotary grinding stone, one foot propped up on a smaller keg. Warily, the pirate crouched and crept towards the man, hammer still raised in one hand, his other hand dangling the links of his chain silently apart. If the man was sleeping, Jack didn't want to wake him until he was in a position to put the smith right back to sleep, with his hammer.

The sight of a round glass bottle with a long neck rolling on the floor below the smith provided another possible interpretation for his unconsciousness. Perhaps the man was in a drunken stupor. The sound of the bottle hitting the earth might have been what had startled him. Jack eyed the bottle wistfully. Empty. Leaning over the smith, the pirate scrutinized the florid, fuzzily-bearded face and red-veined nose. That was assuredly the face of a jug-bitten man. Soft snorting sounds exploded in little puffs from the man's mouth. Poising the hammer where a quick rap would instantly render the man oblivious, Jack reached out with two fingers to tap the smith on his leather-aproned chest. The man shifted his head slightly, grunted and resumed snoring.

Definitely capsized, Jack judged. He wondered just how much alcohol the smith had consumed, and whether it had been enough. Perhaps he should knock the man on the head just as an insurance measure. But such extreme methods were probably not necessary. He began to turn away. Then he stopped. No, it was best to be sure.

Spinning back towards the somnolent smith, Jack yelled right in his face, "Whoa!"

Silence. And then the snoring resumed. Very well. He'd spare the smith more of a headache than the man had already assured himself. Looked like it would take an earthquake to disturb that sot. He wondered how such an egregious drunkard managed this obviously well-run shop. Well, it was none of his concern. He had chains to break. Abandoning his caution, Jack returned to the anvil.

That this was going to be a complicated process became immediately evident. To minimize the discomfort, Jack used the fabric of his sleeves to pad the chafing irons. Then he had to stoop down awkwardly to draw the chain taut over the anvil. This position, while necessary, made it nearly impossible to strike the links with the hammer effectively. Biting the corner of his lip, Jack concentrated on hitting his bindings, but the angle defeated him. Every time he raised the hammer, the chain moved. When he brought it down, trying to trap the links between the edge of the anvil and the face of the hammer, the chain moved.

This was not working well at all. The pirate's face twisted in frustration as the hammer rang on the anvil. Once in a while he'd actually land a blow on the chains, but while the silver chinks showed through the blackened iron, he couldn't aim at a single spot often enough to weaken the shackles. At this rate, he'd be here till doomsday trying to shed these bloody bracelets. Jack didn't have till doomsday.

In futile rage at the recalcitrance of inanimate matter, he flung his arms in the air and yanked on the distorted chains. Bringing his wrists together first, he snapped them apart over and over, wincing as pain shot up his arms. The chains held. Gritting his teeth in bloody-minded determination, Jack fought with his shackles in silence, as though sheer force of will alone would dissolve the iron. But it was obvious he'd break his wrists before he broke those chains.

As the fury drained out of him, Jack slowed his frantic struggles. Time for a new strategy. His eyes lifted to the huge gears resting immobile near the ceiling. The heavy intermeshing teeth rotated the shafts that ran the machinery of the shop. When the gears were in motion, they would crawl along each other with crushing force. Traveling down the central shaft of the main gear, his gaze fell upon the donkey that was its motivating force.

The animal stood with the patient endurance of its kind, its head hanging sleepily, ignoring the frenzy of the strange human that had invaded its domain. If he could get that donkey moving, the gears would turn. Jack considered that interesting possibility. Of course the creature did not look interested in moving, but Jack imagined he could encourage it to change what passed for its mind. He just needed to do it without becoming acquainted with either the stem that bit or the stern that kicked.

Turning to the forge, he noted that several objects were heating in its flames, as though the smith had immediate plans to return to work. Calculatingly, Jack lifted a long, thin metal bar out of the coals. Its crooked end radiated red in the dim smithy. The pirate contemplated the simmering iron for a moment. Then his eyes shifted deviously towards the donkey. _Well, mule, I hate to be inconveniencing you, but . . ._

Unaware that danger was approaching, the donkey remained placid in its stone circle. Then it was too late. There was a sharp sizzle and the smell of burning hair and flesh. The donkey threw up its head with an anguished bray and leapt ahead, all its instincts telling it to flee. The gear shaft groaned into motion, and the entire forge sprang to noisy, clanking life.

The pirate contemplated the piece of flaming donkey hide now attached to the metal rod, turning in his hand. That had worked well. He didn't imagine that donkey would be stopping any time soon. He'd have run if he could have, when they'd done the same to him. Jack swished the makeshift branding iron towards the floor, putting out the fire. He sauntered back to the forge and replaced the bar. Behind him the panicked donkey continued to race around its circle, dragging the entire gear apparatus along with it. Perfect.

Jack approached the junction of the great wooden central gear and the smaller metal one that ran the shaft to the forge. As the wheel circled ponderously, he stretched his arms up and threw the loop of chain over one of the huge wooden teeth. Following along with the motion of the gear, his shoulders straining, he watched with bated breath as the two sets of teeth ground together over the iron links. The sharp edges pulverized the chains just as he had hoped. His hands fell away, no longer inhibited by being bound together. True, he still had the irons on, and the chains still dangled. But now he was free to move, free to fight and climb if he had to. Jack surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction.

Suddenly, above the grinding of the machines and the huffing of the mule, Jack heard a sound that brought his head up sharply. Slowly, the latch on the double doors by the loading dock was lifting. Someone was coming. Jack decided Lady Fortune really hated him today.

TBC

* * *

Thank you to all you great reviewers. To **Captain Tish**--I'm so glad this is sounding like life to you. Will is such a complex character, I felt he deserved some exploration. What made him the way he is in the movie? Grin I'm also glad you like my goofy disclaimer parodies. As for your question on "Whose Guilt?", the next movies may tell what happened to Bootstrap, but Jack and Will do not know at this point. The chickens and the Pennythump fics are percolating on the back burner while I wrestle with the next chapter of this story (It's already in three parts) and with some of that Jack and Anamaria back story you've been interested in.Thank you for the faithful commenting.

To **Captain Sara Sparrow**--looks devious yes, graphic violence warnings appear whenever Will thinks about pirates. Thank you for the review.

To **just visiting**--I am enjoying your visits. Thank you. Sorry, not much James in this. He'll get to show up at the end of course. But more commodore will be forthcoming in future fics.

To **ellennar**--I decided the whole town had to be buzzing with that sort of thrilling gossip, so Will just had to run into the right person. I'm glad this idea works. And thank you for letting me know that Will's frustration is coming through. I've got plans to explore Will's past with J. Brown in an upcoming chapter.

To **Erinya**--Sorry to disappoint with the kinky blacksmith slash. But I'm glad you liked what I did any way. I hope you've caught up on sleep.


	4. Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 1

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 3: Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 1

By Honorat

Rating: K

Disclaimer: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer PotC, pick up the characters in Port Royal, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out!

Summary: In which Will returns to the forge, and we discover the history of Master Brown and his apprentice. This turned out to be the story of the fall of J. Brown. It's going to have several more parts. Lots of OC's. I hope you like them as much as I've grown to. More of the epic of the blacksmith and the pirate. More movie novelization and missing scenes. This one is entirely off the edge of the map. In fact this is an entire lost continent!

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

Canticle for a Blacksmith

Will Turner left Old Man Sorby muttering to himself and set off for the smithy at a jog. He was already behind on several orders, and he had wasted too much time indulging himself today, first in that ill-advised delivery of the sword to Governor Swann, then in the meditation necessary to regain his equilibrium. All around him, voices buzzed with talk of the escaped pirate somewhere in their midst. If the locals were to be believed, the pirate had added to his list of dastardly deeds the apoplectic fits of two elderly gentlemen, the falling of a complete batch of bread, three milk cows drying up, an infestation of moths, a child's tantrum, a goat rampaging in the pawnshop, and numerous small thefts ranging from a pair of unmentionables from a clothesline to a pewter soup ladle.

The corner of Will's mouth twisted ironically. No doubt most of the stories were invented to allow the tellers a moment of shared glory or notoriety. However, one story remained the same: the kidnapping of the governor's daughter. The details changed. He had "held a pistol to her head, my dears!" "practically ravished her! They barely caught him in time!" or "terrified the poor thing until she fainted dead away." But each story increased Will's anger at the unknown criminal. His desire to avenge all injury Elizabeth had suffered burnt white hot within him.

He was not likely to get the chance for that revenge. Instead, he must return to his labour, bow his neck again under his yoke, and let the heroes capture desperate pirates.

* * *

As he approached the street that led to the smithy, Will slowed his steps. Once he had followed this route with a glad heart, anticipating a homecoming. Now, he dreaded what he would find upon his return.

The fulcrum on which his attitude balanced was Mastersmith Joseph Brown. Will reminded himself how lucky he had been to be apprenticed to a man like Master Brown. Not for him the near starvation of Timothy, the printer's devil; nor the bruised and beaten back of Angus, the cooper's apprentice; nor the squalor and ignorance dooming Bunty, the mortician's apprentice.

He'd not known what to expect those seven and a half years ago when he'd waited nervously in the governor's office, flanked by the kindly, imposing Governor Swann and the clerk who would draw up the indentures. He'd been a guest among the servants of the great house for several months while attempts were made to find news of his father, the merchant sailor William Turner. But the Caribbean gave away none of her secrets. Will's fragile hopes had collapsed into fear of an unknown future. However, finally, the decision had been made to arrange for the care of the orphan by finding a craftsman in need of an apprentice. Mastersmith Brown had agreed to take on the responsibility. When the butler had announced the visitor, Will had stood politely and stared with mingled dread and curiosity at the man who was to have control of his life for the next nine years.

Mastersmith Brown had been nothing he could have anticipated. For one thing, he was scarcely taller than Will had been at the time. He was, however, several times thicker—a stocky man with curly brown hair and a bushy beard sprinkled with a few gray hairs. His bright blue eyes had twinkled jovially in his florid square face; his round red nose had suggested a fondness for alcohol. Relieved that the smith seemed a not un-kindly sort, Will had waited to be introduced.

"Is this the boy?" the man had boomed, holding out a calloused and grimy hand.

Gingerly, Will had held out his own hand to be enveloped in a crushing grip. "Will Turner, sir," he'd managed.

"Well, m'boy. You're a mite on the puny side for a smith, but you'll grow. And, after all, look at me. I'm a mite on the short side!" Master Brown's huge and totally disproportional laugh had shaken his entire frame.

Will had smiled nervously, unsure whether he was meant to laugh or if that would be rude.

In a daze, Will had watched as the adults concluded the business of transferring him to the custody of this stranger. He had seen the brown ink flowing onto the heavy tan paper under the clerk's dexterous hand:

Know all men that the Said Joseph Brown doth bynd and oblige himself and his heirs, &tc. to teach or cause to be taught his Said Apprentise in the Arts and Mystery of Smith Craft in the best manner he can and to read and write and likewise to provide for his Said Apprentise Meat, Drink, Washing and Lodging and Apparell fitting for such an Apprentise unto the full ext of nine yeeres and at the end of this tyme one new sute of apparell and forty shillings in mony.

Silently, he had waited as three copies were completed and blotted. Then Will had taken the quill in a hand that trembled slightly and signed his name slowly and carefully underneath the signatures of the governor and the smith. It was done. His life was no longer his own until he reached the age of twenty-one. Nine years had seemed such an impossibly long time.

"C'mon boy," Master Brown had clapped him on the shoulder with a force that jarred his teeth. "Get your effects, and I'll take you over to the smithy."

Since Will's only possession was a small bundle containing the one spare suit of clothing and a nightshirt provided by the governor, this had not taken much effort. He had followed the smith out of the office to find Elizabeth waiting for him.

"You'll come and visit won't you?" she'd asked. And his heart had warmed and drew courage. At least he still had one friend, even if he couldn't see her as often as before.

At the time, he hadn't understood the looks the adults had exchanged; he did now. More than the distance of the path to the town would be separating him from the governor's daughter.

"I'm afraid Will is going to have many other things to do, my dear," Governor Swann had warned Elizabeth, leading her away.

Elizabeth had hung back, watching as Will and his new master were ushered out the door by the butler. Will had turned once to look at her, sensing that something was ending but powerless to stop it.

When the door had closed behind him, he'd never felt so alone. But as he'd followed the smith down the hill, he'd heard a shout. Glancing back over his shoulder, he'd seen Elizabeth jumping about like a flea on the upper balcony not waving a ladylike handkerchief but flailing her entire parasol like a signal flag. A smile had touched the corners of his mouth. No one could subvert her keepers more creatively than Elizabeth. She'd found her way to say good-bye. He'd raised a hand and waved back. Illogically he was cheered. He should have remembered that the best way to be assured that Elizabeth would manage something was to forbid her to do it. Perhaps this hadn't been the end, after all.

In some ways, Will reflected, it hadn't. But in others it most certainly had. A door had closed between them that day that would never open again.

His feet had been set on the path to a life as a labourer, as one who earned his bread by the sweat of his brow.

* * *

Will remembered the first time he'd walked down this street, staring around him at the gray stone buildings, the bustling businesses. Severe and utilitarian. None of the elegance of the governor's home. Will's beauty-loving soul had shrunk back a little at the dirt and plainness of it all, even as he recognized it as familiar. The home he and his mother had shared had been in a similar setting.

Master Brown had drawn up at a heavy set of double doors with a smaller entrance cut into one. Swinging one door open wide, he'd beckoned Will to step inside.

"Well, lad. Here will be your new home."

Stepping over that threshold for the first time, Will had experienced the odours that would perfume his days for all the years to come—coal smoke, dust, oil, warm animal, and above all the nose-prickling scent of hot metal, iron ore, and steel, the elements that would make up his world. As his eyes had adjusted to the dim interior, he'd seen the flicker of the forge to which he had been bound, the myriads of incomprehensible tools, the great anvil brooding like an altar at the center of it all. An almost holy hush had mantled the smithy as master and apprentice surveyed their domain.

Softer than he'd heard it before came the mastersmith's voice, "This is it, son. This is the heart of the world where creation takes place. This is the forge where you'll be heated and hammered until all the impurities have abandoned your soul. This is the anvil where you'll be shaped into a man."

A shiver had run through Will at these words. They had about them the ring of prophecy.

He had followed the mastersmith around the landing dock and down the stairway to the dirt floor of the smithy. In silence they'd walked through the shop, Master Brown reaching out occasionally to run a loving hand along a piece of equipment as though he'd been absent from old friends too long—almost as though he were introducing Will in some inaudible way. Will had felt the heat thicken heavily around him as though a hundred inanimate eyes were observing and weighing him.

He'd been grateful, if startled, when a door had opened and a clatter of feet had resulted in a swirl of people entering the shop. Bewildered at the sudden crowd surrounding him, Will had taken a moment to recognize that these were Master Brown's family. It had never occurred to him that there might be a family. Will had never had one himself.

"He's here! He's here!" a small, feminine replica of her father had cried, tugging on the smith's arm.

"Welcome to the family, Will!" a young blond giant had seized Will's hand and was pumping it like a bellows.

"You'll be staying in the attic room! I got to help make your bed! I left you a surprise! Do you like apples? Gordon brought back apples! This is my doll. Her name is Belle! Make your courtesy Belle. This is Will. He's my new brother!" The small girl had transferred her latch to Will's arm and was talking a blue streak.

Will could scarcely pay attention to what any one person was saying for they'd all talked at once.

Amidst the joyous chaos, the smith had tried to introduce them all.

First came Will's new Mistress, a sweet-faced woman, taller than her husband, as pale and ethereal as he was ruddy and robust. She'd taken one look at the uncertain child her husband had brought home and had folded him into her arms. "We're so glad you're going to be a part of us," she'd told him in her soft voice. She had smelled of lye soap and freshly baked bread. Will had felt tears sting his eyes. It had been so long since anyone had held him. Not since his mother had died. Tentatively, he'd hugged her back, feeling something tight loosening inside. He'd never imagined he might find a home and a family as well as an occupation.

The eldest son, the giant Joseph, Jr. must have inherited his height from his mother's side and his shoulders from his father. The husky 17-year-old journeyman was set to become a partner with his father when he reached his majority and attained his mastery. A second son Gordon, a year younger, was absent since he was a marine up at the fort. Two daughters followed. Susanna, age 15, had greeted Will with a regal abstracted air.

"Don't mind her," Joe, Jr. had snorted. "She's Anne Bolyn today and is nobly preparing to have her head chopped off. If she doesn't watch it, I just might oblige."

Susanna dropped her queenly dignity in favour of pounding her brick wall of a brother with small ineffectual fists.

Will had been surprised into a laugh.

The miniature copy of the mastersmith proved to be Emily, aged seven. She was still clinging to Will like a limpet, eager to drag him off to his new quarters.

The whole family had trooped back through the door to the stairwell that led to the living quarters above the smithy and had crowded through the kitchen and parlour, up to the three family bedrooms and then had even joined Will in climbing the ladder to the narrow attic door. A bed had been tucked into a corner for him, with the promised apple sitting polished and friendly on the quilt. A chipped wash basin had sat on a rickety wooden stand. He'd deposited his bundle of clothing in the trunk provided at the foot of the bed, and then the lot of them had pulled him back down to the kitchen to "put some meat on his bones," so Mistress Brown averred.

* * *

He had found a home. The Brown family had taken him into its warm heart, treating him like a son of the house. It was all a new experience for Will. For the first time he found out what having siblings would have been like, the squabbles, the fun, the rivalry and the loyalty. And he saw what a loving marriage could be. The surety and support. The companionship and warmth. The partnership in the face of the trials of life. Master Brown and his wife were nothing like Will's parents had been. Master and Mistress Brown had their arguments, their tension, and their reconciliations, but there was none of the anguished, thwarted, starving love that lived so close to hate. There was none of the explosive mix of desire and mistrust. There was none of the grief of two people doomed forever to belong to each other, yet forever to be parted. There was none of the aching loneliness. Instead, in the home of the Browns dwelt faith, hope, and love. Will could never be grateful enough to Joseph Brown for that unexpected blessing.

* * *

The next morning, Will had found himself rousted out of bed before dawn. After breaking his fast with the mastersmith and his son, he'd followed them into the smithy. There the men had donned leather aprons, and Will had been issued a smaller one.

"Used to be mine when I was about your size." The massive Joe had grinned. Will had looked up at him in wonder. "It'll bring you good luck."

He'd been led to the forge and introduced to his first chore.

"This will be your task from now on," the smith had informed him as Joe demonstrated how to build up the coal fire in the forge, letting the green smoke burn off until the fire flamed clean. "The fire must always burn at a constant heat."

He'd also been introduced to another of his charges, the donkey that turned the gears that ran the bellows. From now on he'd be responsible for feeding the animal and mucking out its circle.

The smith had then led him around to each piece of equipment: the bellows, the anvils, the hammers, the tongs, the shaping tools, the quench tank, the slack tub, the files, the vises, the grinders. As an apprentice, he would be responsible for keeping these in order, tidying up the shop and returning the tools to their proper locations. Will had looked at the complicated array in despair. He would never learn what all these things were. How would he know what the difference was between a wedge peen and a straight peen hammer? Between a swage and a bick? Or worse. How would he ever remember where they went? There were several of each, in different sizes.

Master Brown had smiled at his confusion. "Don't worry lad. It'll come in time, and you can always ask."

When the donkey had powered the bellows until the fire was at forge temperature, the smith had led his new apprentice to the anvil. Almost absent-mindedly, he'd taken down a flask from the shelf beside the forge, uncorked it, and tossed a libation splash of its liquid contents on the hot bricks of the forge; then he'd taken a swallow himself. The brief odor of burning rum had risen.

"This is what it's all about, son." The smith had turned to his new apprentice. "The tools, the chores, the bloody hard work. It's all about what happens here." With a pair of tongs, he withdrew a bar of metal from the fire. Its end glowed reddish orange. "This is the mystery."

Joe took the bar from his father, placed the molten end against the face of the anvil, drew one of the hammers from the bench, and struck the bar with ringing blows, drawing out the steel, widening and lengthening it.

The mastersmith had handed Will another unheated bar of metal. "Hold this," he instructed softly. "Now, close your eyes and listen."

Unsure what would happen next, Will gripped the steel bar and did as he was told. He heard the pump of the bellows, the movement of the donkey, the creaking of the gears, all a background symphony to the bright arpeggios of Joe's hammering. Then he heard the hissing sizzle of hot metal striking the water of the slack tub.

"Now breathe."

Hot, moist air had filled his lungs. Will had almost opened his eyes, but the smith's voice had gone on.

"Breathe in the steam. Feel the wind of the bellows, the heat of the flames, the living steel in your hands. Feel the shape the metal longs to be."

Wind had stirred in Will's hair as he stood next to the forge, wind that incited the warmth of the fire that caressed his back. He'd concentrated on the bar he held. Bones of earth, wrested from stone and soil and the ashes of forests. It did not feel like inert matter. It warmed to his touch like flesh. Almost, he thought it moved in his hand.

"That's what a smith is, Will. The master of the five elements. Air and water, fire and earth, and spirit to bind them together. The only craft that combines them all."

Will had opened his eyes and stared in wonder at the plain steel strip in his palms. For the first time he'd felt a thrill of excitement at the thought of becoming a smith, of understanding this strange element, of coaxing it into amazing new shapes. He'd looked up at Master Brown.

The smith had smiled at him. "Aye, you've got the sense of the matter in you, young Will Turner. We'll make a smith of you yet."

TBC

* * *

Thank you to all my kind reviewers. I hope you also enjoy this excursion from the movie into the back story. We'll be in the backstory for quite some time I fear. 


	5. Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 2

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 3: Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 2

By Honorat

Rating: K

Disclaimer: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer POTC, pick up the characters in Port Royal, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out!

Summary: In which Will settles in to life at the smithy and has his first sword fight. More of the the history of Master Brown and his apprentice. More OCs. More movie novelization and missing scenes. This one is off the edge of the map. In fact this is an entire lost continent!

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 2

Gradually, the small space under the eaves of the house had grown less strange. He could sleep even in its crowded heat. The noise of a large family had ceased to startle him. He began to feel more at home, less adrift in the world. The sweltering gloom of the smithy grew less alien.

Will had not realized that his life would now be immersed in darkness, defined by the glow of iron and the wavering light of the forge. Only in low light could a blacksmith determine the temperature of the metal by its colour.

Will soon became familiar with the different types of work that could be done at each temperature. At black heat, the faint gleam barely visible, a linseed oil finish could be applied to metal to prevent it from rusting. At cherry heat softer metals turned red and could be easily bent. When the metal glowed orange-red, iron could be cut with ease using a chisel. The smith would also draw out the metal at this temperature, hammering it into longer and thinner shapes. Then would come the bright yellow of near-welding heat at which heavier steel could be worked or upset, made thicker by clamping it in the vise and striking the heated end with a hammer. But the most thrilling temperature was the white hot heat of fire-welding, when iron and steel were on the brink of burning and sprays of sparks flew around the smith as he joined two pieces of metal together with a single smart strike.

The work of the forge was a fiery, sweaty, dusty business. Will was sure he'd eventually breathe so much metal and so much heat, he'd become fire-welded steel himself. He'd longed to try his hand at shaping hot metal, but he had much to learn before Master Brown would hand him the hammer and tell him to try his hand.

His days had eventually assumed an unvarying pattern of work. Six days a week, Will would arise before dawn, build up the fire in the forge, tend the donkey, and do his lessons before any one else was up. Then he'd break his fast with the family and return to the shop with the two smiths. Three days a week, he'd spend mornings in school with the two girls. Mistress Brown taught them herself, for she had said, the local charity school master was an incompetent wastrel, and they could not afford grammar school for the girls. There was no question of an orphaned apprentice attending grammar school. And so Will furthered his ability to read and write and cipher as per the terms of his indenture.

On Sundays, the whole family would file to the parish church, occupy an entire pew, and the younger set would twitch and wriggle and be frowned at and shushed until the whole interminable service was over. The only relief had been the chance to sing at the tops of their lungs.

Will had never minded services. Stillness came naturally for him, and he seldom wasted energy in unnecessary fretting. If he found no comfort in the words being spoken, he could remember his mother and talk with her in his heart. Far ahead of him, in the governor's pew, he could see the top of Elizabeth's head. It had pleased him then as now, to be in the same building as she was. Sometimes, if he was lucky, they would be able to exchange a few words afterwards before her governess or her maid whisked her away with a flutter of scolding.

The only variation to this pattern was his monthly half-day, when Mastersmith Brown gave his apprentice back to himself for a morning, and Will was free to abandon the forge and amuse himself as he pleased. Most of the other apprentices used these times to romp about town getting into trouble, but Will's half-days had been his very own secret delight. He'd managed to let Elizabeth know his schedule, and she'd do her best to shed her watchdogs and meet him on a secluded, sandy beach where they'd build sand castles and talk and giggle and swim in the little bay. They had to time it so their clothing would dry before noon when she'd return meekly to her chastisement and he'd return to his work. She hadn't always managed to slip away, and the day would be a little less turquoise and gold if he had to spend it alone, but Elizabeth was a master at misdirection, and she was almost always waiting for him.

Those halcyon days had made up for the drudgery of the rest of the month, when ceaseless, repetitive labour was all he knew from dawn until dusk. Mastersmith Brown was a tireless worker, and he expected no less from his apprentice.

Along with caring for the fire and the donkey, Will kept the shop tidy, the tools picked up and returned to their proper locations, and the dirt floor swept. Often he would be sent to fetch supplies, directing the delivery of iron bars and coal when the great merchant ships docked in Port Royal to exchange raw materials for sugar and coffee. He also delivered completed work to customers throughout the town.

There were also a ferrier, a shipsmith, and a gunsmith in Port Royal, but Mastersmith Brown had the largest shop, serving the sugar cane industry with axes, adzes, hoes, sickles, scythes, plow blades and other farm equipment; equipping the town buildings with latches, locks, nails, and hinges; creating the assorted tools needed by other crafts; manufacturing the variety of utensils, kettles, pots, and ladles need for housewifery; and providing the garrison with a variety of iron goods from gaol doors to shackles. However, the crowning production of J. Brown's smithy were the blades—knives and cutlasses, rapiers and swords.

Will longed to be allowed to learn to forge the graceful weapons, but he had to be content with hundreds of hours of grinding and polishing the lesser blades of tools and knives. He wasn't even allowed to forge a nail.

"Patience, young Will," the smith had advised. "There is a time for everything, and all things must start at the beginning. When you have mastered the iron and steel, then you will be ready to let it master you."

As far as Will could see, that meant breathing and eating a stone of ore as he filed and swept and scrubbed.

* * *

One day the routine had been interrupted. Will always remembered the day he'd met Gordon Brown. 

The young man, freshly returned from a tour aboard the _Dauntless_, had managed to sweet talk his superior officer into allowing him a brief respite from his duties at the fort.

"They don't need me so desperately to count cannon balls and peel potatoes and spit-polish the officer's boots that they couldn't give me a couple of hours to come home and meet the new addition to the family," he explained airily. "I promised on pain of death to return post haste the moment the French attack."

Such logic was not necessarily of the sort that impressed marine officers, but Will had soon learned that Gordon had a silver tongue with which he skipped in and out of trouble with astonishing rapidity.

His family was ecstatic to see him, surrounding him with their usual noisy welcome. Will hung back shyly, staring at the slender young man in his splendid marine uniform, until he was pulled forward to be introduced.

The younger and much shorter Brown was eager to demonstrate his new skills with the small sword over the fallen body of his towering older brother, so the family was treated to the excitement of a _duello_ in the forge that afternoon. It soon became apparent that what Gordon lacked in height, he far made up in agility and expertise. When he disarmed his opponent for the third time, Joe had threw up his arms and surrendered.

"I give up, you young rapscallion. You've got me beat. I'll just be making those pretty blades you're so fond of, and you can do the skewering of people with them!"

Gordon crowed triumphantly. "You see," he confided to Will. "Old High and Mighty there is such a great, hulking, tall brute, I had to learn to defend myself or he'd certainly have pulverized me."

This statement resulted in a brief wrestling match between the two brothers which proved Gordon's point admirably. His blacksmith brother headlocked him almost instantly. Dusting themselves off, the young men returned to being on the best of terms.

Noticing Will's interest in his sword, Gordon offered it to him. "She's a beauty, Will," he exclaimed with pride. "Much as I hate to admit that the halfwit there is such a genius, this is a magnificent sword." He dodged his brother's cuff to the head.

Will held out his hand for the sword eagerly. He'd not dared ask to touch the valuable blades racked around the central gear shafts in the smithy. But they'd been calling to him. As his fingers closed around the hilt, he ceased to be aware of anything but this incredible creature he was holding. If the cold, unworked bar had seemed living to him, this slender flame of folded steel sang to life in his grip. This, then was what the metal longed to be. Gently, he slipped the blade along the currents of air, feeling its balance, the ways it wanted to move.

Admiringly, he watched the flickering light of the forge gather and pool and ripple along the blade. Then he became aware of Gordon's laughing voice.

"I think he's asleep! Hey, Will! Are you in there somewhere?"

The young man's voice was teasing, but his eyes were sympathetic.

Will took a deep breath and tore his eyes away from the blade in his hands. Reluctantly he offered the sword back to its owner. He was surprised when Gordon shook his head.

"I imagine you'd like to try it out, wouldn't you?" he asked.

Unbelieving Will watched as the young soldier selected another blade from the racks.

"Let's see what you can do," Gordon suggested.

"I've never used a sword," Will protested. "I wouldn't want to damage it."

"Oh, don't worry," Gordon grinned. "If my brother forged it right, you won't be able to hurt it. And if he didn't," he cast an impish glance at Joe, "I'd rather know now than when I have a pirate at the other end of my blade."

"It'll be fine, my reprehensible brother," Joe rumbled. "Even you could not wreck that sword, and Will's got a great deal more sense than you."

Gordon slapped a palm to his chest. "You wound me, mountainous man."

"No, but I could," his brother responded good-naturedly. "Now are you going to show the whelp there how to use that blade before he combusts?"

"All in good time, you impatient lout."

Gordon turned to Will. "The best way to start is for you to try to follow the moves that I make. Do you think you can do that?"

Will nodded, still mesmerized by the feel of the blade in his hand.

The young marine faced Will and raised his sword. Will carefully matched his stance, watching the way Gordon placed his feet and balanced his weight, how he held his shoulders and the angles of his arms. Occasionally, Gordon would correct him or make a suggestion. Gradually the room narrowed until he was aware of nothing but the man across the steel from him. Each action Gordon made, Will mirrored although their blades had still not even touched. Without noticing it, Will began breathing in time to the other's breath. Every tiny muscle movement in the swordsman found its echo in the blacksmith's apprentice. Each step grew closer in timing until they were almost dancing with the swords in perfect unison. Will felt as though he had become Gordon. As though Gordon's commands to his muscles moved Will's limbs. As though the beat of the other's heart resonated in his own blood.

Then Gordon's blade flashed forward. Without consciously thinking, Will matched that move as well, and the silver clash of steel rang down his arm and chased along his nerves. He did not watch either his blade or his opponent's, only the man himself. Watched for the tiny signals that gave away his next movement, signals less in his eyes than in the patterns of motion in his muscles and tendons. He did not register the dawning surprise in Gordon's eyes as anything more than an action to be copied. The thrill of crashing blades chimed through his body. He could stay forever like this, alive amidst arcs of deadly steel. The sword in his hand sang softly through the air, a siren song.

Suddenly, the blade was out of his hand, clattering to the ground, and young Gordon's point was picking out the buttons on his shirt. The swordsman had made a move too fast for Will to counter. Will took a deep breath, aware that he was grinning like a madman.

"Try again?" Gordon asked grinning back with a puzzled look of wonder in his blue eyes.

"Yes, please," Will nodded eagerly.

Twice more they'd danced the swords together, steel slicing percussion. Each time Will held on a little longer before he was disarmed. The family audience applauded wildly, Emily jumping up and down until Joe placed one huge hand on her head and informed her that she hadn't been given permission to fly.

"Well, brother," Gordon addressed Joe as he retrieved his sword from Will. "You've been put to shame today. This bantling has outfought you entirely, and he didn't even know what he was doing."

"Hey," Joe protested. "You beat him all three times, too."

"Ah! But did you notice how I had to beat him? Of course you didn't," Gordon answered his own question. "You don't watch what I do when I fight. But I couldn't lose young Will's eyes. I could only best him by using moves he hadn't seen before and by doing my damnedest (sorry ladies) to mislead him with my physical cues. That's not something I normally have to worry about with an inexperienced fighter. And I never have to worry about it with you."

Joe looked indignant.

But Gordon had already forgotten him. Turning to the mastersmith, he exclaimed, "Father, it would be a crying shame for a lad with Will's instinct for the sword not to be allowed to develop it."

The smith nodded thoughtfully. "I can see that, son. And it would not be a bad thing for the man who crafts blades to be skilled in their use. What do you suggest?"

"Well, I certainly could teach him something, but I'm just learning myself," Gordon thought out loud. "I'll tell you what. I really wish the sword master at the fort could take a look at Will. I'm sure he'd be impressed. Maybe he'd even allow Will to join us for practice. He could really make Will into something special."

Everyone looked speculatively at Will, who'd blushed and felt uncomfortable. He wanted this so badly he could taste it. "Perhaps Captain Norrington might make a request . . ." Will trailed off uncertainly.

Gordon lit up. "I'd forgotten. You know the big man himself. Well then, there shouldn't be any problem. I'll just approach him on behalf of a young friend of mine. It won't hurt that this will bring me to his notice too." He smirked at Will. "Enlightened self interest, boy. You won't even have to thank me."

"Thank you!" Will couldn't help himself. "You don't know . . ."

Smiling at his father's apprentice still holding the sword like it was a child, Gordon interrupted softly. "Oh, yes I do, young Mr. Turner. I know." He held out his hand, and Will had reluctantly returned the blade.

Noticing the change in the angle of light from the slats in the walls, Gordon grew more animated. "Alas, duty calls!" he exclaimed. "The fates of Port Royal and the entire British Empire rest on my scarlet shoulders, so I'd best be getting back to the fort."

He embraced his parents, punched his brother in the arm, bowed over Susanna's hand with a flourish, threw Emily in the air and kissed her soundly, and wrung Will's hand. Then he vaulted to the loading dock, popped out the door and tore off for the fort at a dead run.

"There never was such a whisky frisky, hey-go-mad lad as our Gordon," the smith commented with a rueful smile. "But the boy's done well for himself."

"Aye, if he can just keep himself from driving his superiors to hang him off the yardarm," his brother snorted.

* * *

Gordon had been as good as his word. Will had received his invitation to join the marine cadets at their weapons practice. He took to rising two hours early, before dawn, and practicing on his own before his one hour with the Fort Royal sword master. It had not taken him long to outstrip his compatriots. The dance of swords was in his blood. He'd even begun to best Gordon once in awhile. 

Will had been sorry to lose his friend and dueling partner when Gordon had been posted again to the _Dauntless_ as she took up her patrol of the Caribbean shipping lanes. Gordon himself had been nothing but thrilled. He hoped they'd meet pirates. Then he'd get to try out that lovely blade for real.

But when the three month patrol had returned to Port Royal's harbour, a somber Captain Norrington had come to the smithy to deliver the news that Gordon Brown, marine, had met and battled valiantly and fallen before a far more deadly enemy than pirates. Like so many British sailors, he'd been taken with the cholera and had not recovered. His grave would be the unmarked sea. To Will it had seemed as though the mastersmith grew older in one breath of a moment. That night Will hadn't heard when he'd come home from the tavern.

The magnificent sword his brother had made for Gordon had been returned to his family along with his few effects and a letter he'd dictated when it had become obvious that he might not win this fight.

Will had never found out the contents of that letter, although he'd occasionally come upon Mistress Brown, seated at the table, brushing its folds with trembling fingertips. But the part of it that had concerned Will was that Gordon had left his sword to his father's apprentice. "You're the only one who will really appreciate it," he'd written. "And it deserves to be used, not pinned on a wall."

Every time Will practiced with that sword, a finer one than any other boy in Port Royal had possessed, even the sons of gentlemen, he felt as he had that first day he and Gordon had fought—as though another step stirred the dust beside his own, another hand clasped the hilt alongside his, and another heartbeat drummed in his ears.

TBC

* * *

Thank you for the lovely review, **Captain Tish**. I'm so glad you like my little family. I wanted to explore the elements that go into making Will the person we see in the movie and it has gotten quite out of hand. There is certainly a lot of tragedy in the life of Master Brown to turn him from the smith that could teach Will to make those beautiful swords into the jug-bitten sot we see in the movie. But there are good times too. I hope you enjoy it. 


	6. Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 3

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 3: Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 3

By Honorat

Rating: K

Disclaimer: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer PotC, pick up the characters in Port Royal, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out!

Summary: In which Will finally learns to forge a sword. How to forge a sword in one easy chapter. Oh, my aching back--the research! More of the epic of the blacksmith and the pirate. More movie novelization and missing scenes. This one is entirely off the edge of the map. In fact this is an entire lost continent!

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 3

Life and work had to continue, even though a little of the sparkle of the world had departed with Gordon. Gradually, the family had ceased to search the faces of companies of young men in scarlet coats only to realize afresh that the sought after face would never appear again. Eventually, Will had ceased to look up, listening for his friend's laugh, when he was practicing at the fort. Time passed and the routine resumed.

Along with his sword fighting, Will was advancing in his craft. Finally, the day had come when he was to begin actually learning to forge metal. First, however, he had to master the equipment he would be using.

"Every one of these tools is unique," the smith had told him. "Choose the right one, and half the job is over."

Will had frowned in concentration, sure he'd never perceive the pattern in all this variety of equipment.

"For instance, if you want to shape the metal, you'll not be choosing a flatter." The smith had held out a hammer with a large flat head. "See the sharp edges of it? Those'll leave marks in the steel. No, the hammer you want is a peen hammer. These are crowned so they'll move the metal without leaving indentations." He'd handed Will a hammer with a wedge on one end and a flat, rounded head.

"Like this, then?" Will had picked out another hammer, this time with a round ball on one end, but also crowned.

"Yes, that's a ball peen. You've got the idea. Now, would you choose this one for shaping?" The smith had indicated another flat-headed hammer.

"No," Will had answered quickly. Perhaps this wouldn't be so impossible after all. "It's got edges."

"Right," the smith had agreed. "On the other hand, this hammer, it's called a set hammer, is perfect for making squared corners and flat edges. They're like people, Will," he'd continued, as Will had followed him over to the workbench. "Each one's got its own peculiarities that look ridiculous and get in the way until you find the job it's meant for. Then those odd characteristics make sense."

Although he'd thought he'd never keep them straight, as the days went by Will had begun to recognize when he needed a ball peen hammer or a wedge peen one for shaping. He'd learnt when he needed a single-jack hammer for heavy shaping or when he needed someone to hold the work so he could use the sledge hammer. The blisters on his hands became calluses. The muscles in his arms and back grew impervious to the strain of long hours of heavy work. The flying chips of molten metal marked his soot-blackened forearms with the stigmata of a smith. He began to move with familiar ease among the elements of the forge.

The fire of the forge fascinated him. He'd catch himself staring into it, mesmerized by the lambent creep of flame along the red-gold and ash paper line of a coal. The curl of tongues of fire along a bar of steel bringing the cold, immovable object from the faintest hint of a blue glow to a blazing glory of golden life satisfied some deep longing in him. The rhythm of the hammer as he drew out the molten steel resonated under his skin. And the white hot conflagration of fire-welding, when the sparks would sizzle around and on him in a coruscation of light made his blood sing.

At first he'd made small objects—nails and spikes. Then he'd been assigned larger, less complex tools such as plowshares and shovels. Finally, he'd been allowed to work the lesser blades—to slip a wedge of steel between the folds of iron to give an axe a cutting edge, and to join an iron back to the steel edge of a knife.

The three smiths, master and journeyman and apprentice, had each brought their own qualities to their work. Master Brown gave his love of the soul of the metal, Joe had an uncanny sense of timing, and Will, to his surprise, discovered that he was the artist, that he loved most of all to make an ordinary object into a thing of beauty. The smithy of J. Brown became known as the place where the most elegant hinges and chandeliers and even kitchen kettles could be purchased. And Will had absorbed everything the other two could teach him.

For three years, he'd learnt the ways of iron and steel, learnt to judge the quality of an ingot, learnt to sense the moment when bars of metal were almost liquid and could be joined together into a single piece, learnt when force was needed and when restraint. But always he'd looked with longing on the swords Master Brown and Joe were forging. Someday, he also would be worthy to give to steel the shape it desired to be.

All of the processes that went into the crafting of a sword, Will had mastered. He was only awaiting the word that would free him to bring them together. One day, that word was finally given.

* * *

Will found his hands actually trembling as he selected the billets of steel and iron that would form his first blade. He would begin with two layers of iron lying between three layers of steel. By the time he was finished folding it, the blade would have more than a thousand layers. 

"Why, since steel is so much harder than iron and keeps a better edge, do we work iron into the blades?" Master Brown asked him, testing.

"Because the steel alone is brittle," Will answered softly, still absorbed in the feel of the metal. "It will cut, but it cannot give. That means it will shatter under stress." He brushed a reverent forefinger along the edge of an iron bar. "The iron gives it flexibility, allowing it to bend. Only then will the blade have strength."

"Very good, young Turner. You may proceed."

Will wired the layers together to anchor them in place temporarily. Using the tongs, he settled the bundled metal into the heart of the forge that the donkey had powered to the high heat necessary for fire-welding. While he waited for the metal to reach the burning point, Will set out the fine washed silver sand that would act as a flux in the joint and chose the hammer he would use to strike the weld.

Normally, Will would have continued with other work while the metal heated, but that day, he wanted to observe the entire process. Indulgently, Master Brown allowed him to stand by the forge, watching entranced as his first sword in its infant stages glowed from blue to red to gold to white. When sparks were beginning to fly off the metal, the mastersmith indicated that he would hold the work with the tongs while Will struck the blow that would join the layers.

"You must always strike while the metal is still white hot," the smith reminded him. "If any cooling occurs the weld will only be partial."

In a smooth swift arc, Master Brown swung the metal out of the forge and onto the anvil. The instant the molten billets touched the face, Will brought the hammer down sharply, in one blow that had showered him with hot sparks. Instantly the layers joined and the smith returned the bar to the flames without delay. Will flung the silver sand over the joint to remove any impurities. Then the smith pulled the work from the forge a second time and laid it on the anvil. With the heavy hammer, Will sealed the union between the layers making them a single piece of metal.

Then began the difficult and time-consuming process of twisting and folding the metal, giving it that wondrous marbled pattern that would be so beautiful in the finished sword and that would bear witness to its strength. By the time Will had folded the steel a dozen times, his shoulders burned as though they would drop off, his callused hands felt raw, and wherever his arms and chest were not protected by the leather of the apron, he was spattered with the burns of sparks. But he had no attention to spare for his hurts. Instead he cradled the cooling bar in his hands, turning it so that the light caught its intricacies and played over its varied surface.

Joe nodded his head at the apprentice. "Love at first sight, eh?" he remarked to his father.

"As it should be," the mastersmith agreed. "We'll call it a night, now," he informed Will. "Time to clean up for the evening meal."

"Will!" Joe waved a hand in front of his face. "You can come back to it tomorrow."

Will looked up, dazed.

"You'll have a hard time shedding that apron and donning your shirt if you don't let that chunk of ore go, son," the smith reminded him with a grin.

"I'll wager he sleeps with it tonight," Joe laughed. "C'mon, Will. Let's get rid of this grime so we can get some grub. You may be able to exist on spiritual food, but the rest of us are starving."

With a concerted effort, Will managed to set his work down on the bench. He stripped his apron over his head and followed Joe and Master Brown to the slack tub where they scrubbed off as much of the soot as had not permanently welded itself to their bodies. But his eyes kept straying to where the metal waited, seeming still to glow to him in the dim light.

Will tried to behave sensibly and leave the thing behind when he entered the house, but a minute after the door had closed behind him, he was back. The metal bar accompanied him to the kitchen, and later, Joe would have won his bet if anyone had taken him up on it.

An hour before he usually began his day, Will was down at the forge building up the fire and tending the puzzled donkey. His sword practice was more than a little perfunctory as he impatiently waited for the temperature to come up.

By the time Joe stuck his head in the door, rubbing his eyes sleepily, Will had already placed the bar into the flames. "Youth!" muttered the twenty-year-old journeyman in disgust, and he closed the door.

When the mastersmith entered the shop, still wiping the last crumbs of his morning meal from his moustache with the back of his wrist, the steel was glowing red.

"Your zeal does you credit, young William," he remarked. "But do you have a plan for this blade when you remove it from the heat?"

"A plan?" Will asked.

"Yes. Will you draw out the steel into a curved cutlass or a straight small sword? How wide and how long will you make the tang? That will affect the sword's balance. How long will this blade be? You must envision what you want the metal to become so it can sense that through your hands and strive to match your vision."

Will did know what type of blade he wanted to make—one just like Joe had made for Gordon, but with a greater reach. Will was already taller than Gordon had been, and he was still growing. Mistress Brown kept having to let out his clothing.

"A small sword," Will told his master. "With a tang nearly the full width of the blade and extending into the pommel."

"Very well," Master Brown said. "When the steel is ready, you may begin shaping it."

The steel was reluctant to reach the correct temperature, or so it seemed to Will's heightened sense of urgency. But at last it shifted to the rose-gold that meant it was ready to be worked. Only the first handspan of the bar was heated. Will used the tongs to remove it, set the glowing end on the face of the anvil and began to draw out the steel, increasing its length even as its thickness decreased. Over and over, he returned the work to the forge, reheating it in sections. Then he would hammer the molten metal until his bones rang with the shock of the blows. He marveled at the way the steel answered his request that it move and shape itself. Gradually, the bar of folded steel assumed the proportions of the sword it would be.

Occasionally, Master Brown would stop Will from his work, indicating that he should return the entire length of steel to the fire and allow it to heat evenly throughout its length. When it was red hot, Will removed the blade, and the smith instructed him to let it rest and cool without working it.

"You must allow it time to remember that it is part of a whole, to align itself with the remainder of the blade in a uniform grain. Otherwise each section you work will retain irregularities, will contend against the rest of the blade when under stress, rather than striving in unity," he explained.

As Will waited with ill-concealed impatience for the steel to return to its dark, quiescent stage, the mastersmith smiled at him. "Any man can hammer molten steel, Will. That merely takes brute force. What distinguishes a master craftsman is that he knows when to wait with patience. Force is easy. Waiting is not."

Eventually, the waiting would be over, the steel returned to the forge, and Will could continue working it. Once he had achieved the basic shape of the sword, he began tapering the blade, creating the tang and the tip by hammering at an angle. Master Brown or Joe would check his work, pointing out bulges in the thickness created by the tapering, that needed to be drawn out. As a finishing touch, Will used a tap and die set to place the threads for the pommel on the tang.

At last, on the anvil before him, lay the blade of a sword. Will knew it wasn't perfect. He could already see things he would do differently the next time. But the mastersmith nodded his approval of the blade, and accomplishment was resonating in Will's veins. A thrill ran through him that there would now be many next times. One last time, he returned the blade to the fire to heat through and then cool. The folded, beaten steel would forever be a single work of art.

"Now, the steel is too hard to be ground or polished," Master Brown told him. "You'll need to soften it, to anneal it. How will you go about doing that?"

Will had watched this process a hundred times. "First," he said. "The blade should be heated blood red. Then I leave it insulated in the ash of the forge over night."

"Exactly, young William," the smith affirmed. "Slowly is the key. It must cool slowly. You cannot force the steel."

This meant more waiting. Will left the smithy that night with many a backwards glance at the cooling forge where his first sword lay nestled under its blanket of powdery gray ash.

Over the next days, Will discovered just how much grinding and polishing a sword actually took. First he worked out the edge and tip on the large grinding stone with a stream of cool water playing over it to prevent heating of the edge. Then he used the fuller in the hardy hole in the anvil to place a groove down the center of the blade. This would lighten the sword even more. Finally he spent days polishing the blade—over fifty hours with twelve different stones. His hands cramped and his back ached from hours of sitting in the same position, but he was determined to master the art of bringing out the beautiful damascened pattern of a blade. When the mastersmith finally agreed that Will had adequately polished his sword, it was ready to harden again.

This time Will submerged the sword into a salt bath to heat the blade evenly and thoroughly—a much surer method than the varied fire of the forge. Then he plunged the hardened and heated blade into the quench tank where the vegetable oil would cool it rapidly and evenly.

"If the steel does not cool evenly, the blade may warp or even fracture," Joe told him. "The oil, because it is a slower quench than water, allows you to gently move the blade to dislodge the bubbles that form on the surface of the steel, which insulate and slow the cooling on the affected area. This allows the heat to bleed off equally over the surface, so you'll reduce your chance of warpage."

The mastersmith had deferred to his son for this procedure. "There's no one with the instinct for quenching like Joe," the man had said proudly.

"Timing is everything," Joe informed Will who was easing the blade through the viscous liquid. "Wait too long, the blade is ruined. Wait not long enough, the blade is ruined. You'll learn to feel, somewhere inside you, when the steel has cooled enough to be hardened."

That time, Will had needed to time his work with an hourglass. He would have to craft a great many more blades before he'd recognize the ideal time for waiting. When the prescribed amount of time for a blade of that sort passed, he looked questioningly at Joe.

The journeyman nodded. "That should be about right. You'll have to see how it turns out and adjust your timing accordingly in the future."

Removing the blade from the quench tank, Will handed it to Joe. Relief swept through him as the young man nodded. His sword had not been ruined.

Then the blade was ready to be tempered. When the temperature of the forge decreased sufficiently, Will heated his sword. This, he learned, was another time for patient waiting. When the blade had held the heat long enough, he cooled it in the slack tub.

"You'll have to do that several times to find the level of hardness you need," Master Brown informed him. "You want the blade hard enough to hold its edge, but not brittle enough to chip or crack."

Over and over again, Will heated the steel. He checked the sword each time he withdrew it from the tub, dripping water. Finally, he decided the blade was tempered correctly. With trepidation, he handed it to his master.

The smith scrutinized the work, turning it, running his hand along the blade, brushing a work-hardened thumb over its edge. He looked up at his apprentice. "Very acceptable work for your first try, Will Turner."

Will sighed in relief. The most critical part of the sword was complete, and he had not failed. He felt his shoulders sag, and he glanced down at his own abused hands.

"It's not all magic, is it?" Master Brown commented.

Will looked up at the mastersmith. He had anticipated this work for so long, but he'd never imagined the hours of labour a single sword took. Many of those hours had been sheer determined toil. Some of those hours had brought pain.

"No, it's not," he answered.

Master Brown handed the sword back to its maker. Will cradled his creation in his hands, admiring the way the marbled pattern of it caught the light, feeling the satisfaction of steel that had become what it longed to be. He met his master's gaze again, his face lighting like molten metal, the sparks flying from his eyes.

But it's the most wonderful thing I've ever done!" he exclaimed.

"Then someday you will be a swordsmith, Will Turner," Master Brown responded. "The hard work and the tedious repetition and the pain are the price you'll pay for the magic. But it will always be there for you, waiting on the other side of any great effort." The mastersmith put a hand on his apprentice's shoulder.

"Anything really worthwhile calls for sacrifice," he told Will soberly. "In the end a thing is only worth what you are willing to give, and to give up, for it. The steel and the sword will demand your dedication and your life, but they will pay you back a thousandfold in the end."

* * *

Master Brown had been right. The magic of creation had only increased for the young swordsmith. Will remembered that sword now, the first of many, many more—each one as unique in his heart as a living soul. He thought he would recognize one of his own blades even without the use of his eyes, that somehow the metal would know the touch of its maker and would whisper his name through his fingertips. 

Not every day did the golden flame of genius curl around Will's heart as he worked. But he learnt to work with patience through both the pain and the delight. He discovered that his work never completely met his dream of perfection, but he continued to push himself further into the depths of his soul in his search for a way to break through to that dream. He learnt to be silent and let the work speak to him. And he was rewarded with occasional moments of transcendent, passionate creation, when every move he made with the metal was a joy, and the steel seemed to flow from his fingertips into the shape of his thoughts.

Gradually, the swords made by Will Turner began to match those made by Joe and Master Brown.

TBC

* * *

Thank you to all those who reviewed. **Lau**, I'm glad you're liking the story and my little family. Master Brown is an anomaly as he is in the film--obviously he must have been a better man at some point in time.**Just visiting**, Alas, no commodore in this one. Just lots of shop class! **Captain Tish, **thanks for your faithful reviews. This is not so much Mr. Brown's first slide as it is evidence that the slide will occur. Since this whole chapter is Will's POV and Will has never met Jack, we won't be seeing our favourite pirate until Chapter 4. Yes, Will and Elizabeth will be having some trials to their relationship provided for your entertainment courtesy of Governor Swann and Will's overdeveloped sense of honour. Thanks also for your comment on my Jack/Anamaria story. I'm glad you liked it. 


	7. Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 4

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 3: Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 4

By Honorat

Rating: K

Disclaimer: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer PotC, pick up the characters in Port Royal, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out!

Summary: In which Governor Swann interferes and Will and Elizabeth have a falling out. And a wedding! I love weddings! Drinks all around! More metallurgical history shows up, and a journey begins. More movie novelization and missing scenes. This one is entirely off the edge of the map. In fact this is an entire lost continent!

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

Will had been sixteen when Governor Swann had shown up, in his elegant, brocaded person, at the smithy. This unprecedented arrival had stirred up the inhabitants into a flurry of hospitality. The great man had been escorted into the parlour and offered such refreshments as the household afforded, which he graciously accepted. Having satisfied the requirements of courtesy, the governor acquainted his host with the tenor of his visit. 

Master Brown had returned to the forge to inform Will that he was wanted, the governor was so kind as to wish to see how Will was doing for himself.

Will had washed up as best he could, although he'd not had time to change from his work clothes.

He'd entered the parlour, a pleasant if puzzled smile on his face.

"Good morning, Governor Swann." Will bowed politely.

Good morning, Mr. Turner," the governor nodded to the apprentice. "How have you been doing in your apprenticeship?"

"Very well, sir," Will replied.

"So Mr. Brown has told me. He says you are very useful around the smithy." The governor smiled benevolently on the boy. "I'm very glad to hear it. Very glad."

Will bowed again, unsure how he was meant to respond to this daunting, if a bit patronizing, attention from such an august personage.

Governor Swann did not appear to expect a response. "I'm glad to find you've grown to be a sensible young man, Mr. Turner. I must commend your Master."

Will looked down at his work-roughened hands and tried not to resent being treated like a prime bit of cattle, but he raised his eyes to meet the governor's at the man's next words.

"You have been a good friend to my daughter, Mr. Turner."

Will nodded, uncertain where this conversation was heading. "And always shall be, sir."

"Indeed." The governor cleared his throat. "I realize you want what is best for her."

"Of course, sir," Will responded promptly.

Governor Swann appeared to be searching for the correct words. Will watched him narrowly, a sense of uneasiness increasing like the tightening of wire bands about his chest.

"My daughter is perhaps . . . too free . . . with her affections," the governor's said awkwardly. "Too easy in her manner. She does not always keep the line." He huffed disapprovingly. "I have been an indulgent parent—too indulgent, perhaps." He stared at Will as though expecting the boy to have divined his meaning from these oblique statements.

Will frowned. Surely her father couldn't be suggesting Elizabeth would ever do anything improper. "Sir, Miss Swann's conduct has always done you credit," he spoke firmly.

"Yes, I know. But she is no longer a child," the governor emphasized.

Yes, Will had noticed that.

"She is a young lady, now, and I must guard her reputation, if she will not. As must you, young man."

Meeting the governor's stern look with widening eyes, Will asked warily, "What are you suggesting, sir?"

"Only this. That a young woman such as my daughter should not be subject to the malicious tongues of gossips. I know you intend no harm, Mr. Turner, but when a young man of your station keeps company with a gently-born girl, people will talk. She will be entering society soon, and her honour must be spotless."

Will felt the inexplicable tightness in his chest increase. His world seemed to be shifting and leaving him stranded without light or air. Elizabeth. His best friend. How could his mere presence be a threat to her? How could the respect he held for her be twisted by some malign influence into dishonour? Their beautiful times together distorted into something ugly? He had never paid any attention to the gulf that existed between the governor's mansion and the smithy before. It had never seemed to matter to Elizabeth. Somehow, he knew it still would not matter to her. But should it? Could the friendship that gave his life meaning be a peril to the girl for whom he would willingly lay down his life? Apparently it could.

The governor had not stopped talking. "I know I can depend on you to support me in this, Mr. Turner."

The governor stood in the light of the single window, gold edging the pale blue brocade of his coat, representative of power and wealth and parental authority. In the faded grays and browns of his handed-down homespun, Will nearly disappeared into the shadows. Only his white face stood out of the gloom, eyes dark with hurt. There was never any question whose wishes would prevail.

Through the ashes in his mouth, Will forced out the words, "Of course you may, sir. I understand." A blacksmith, too, could be a man of honour. If Elizabeth would be best served by the severing of their relationship, he would have to find the steel in his soul to make that cut. But he knew that blade would pierce his own heart in the process.

The governor seemed unaware of the sacrifice he was asking of Will. He beamed at the boy, knowing that if he could not control Elizabeth, he could this apprentice blacksmith. "Excellent."

* * *

Elizabeth had not understood. 

"I don't care what my father says!" she stormed at Will. "What do _you_ say, Will Turner?"

She did not understand, from her position of power, the chains that bound him, chains he had been asked to forge himself, link by link. "I cannot go against your father's strictures," he tried to explain in frustrated agony. "I cannot!"

"Then there's nothing more to say, is there?" Elizabeth froze into the haughty young lady she had never before been in his presence, hurt and angry. "Goodbye, Will."

Will watched, throat seized, as the drawbridge pulled up and the portcullis smashed down and the yawning chasm opened forever between them. He was doing this for her sake, he reminded himself through gritted teeth, resisting the urge to take everything back. To throw convention to the winds and beg her forgiveness. He had to leave, while his courage still held. "Goodbye, Miss Swann," he said softly, addressing her by her title for the first time.

Elizabeth had whirled and run down the road away from him. Will had watched until he could no longer see her. Then he'd run up the narrow twisting path to the cliffs above the bay to his own secret place. His unshed tears had scalded the backs of his eyes like molten lead. The day had been a paradise of green and gold and azure, but Will never remembered it as anything but heavy, clouded gray.

* * *

On his first half-day after Governor Swann's visit, Will had not known what to do. Finally, he did nothing, remaining at the smithy and working through the hours that had once meant so much to him. He never knew that Elizabeth had escaped to their beach and waited for him as she always had before. After that, neither of them had ever returned to it.

* * *

Will had been deep in the throes of crafting the pommel of a sword on the lathe the afternoon a wispy, vaguely familiar young man had crept tentatively into the smithy. Will had left his work and come around the central forge to meet the customer. Wiping the oil and grime off his hands, he'd greeted the young man politely. 

"Good afternoon. How may I help you?"

"Um . . ." the visitor stared myopically at him. "Is Mr. Brown in?"

"He's out back," Will replied. He was used to customers believing he couldn't know what he was doing, and insisting on speaking to one of the other smiths. He tried not to let it bother him. "Is there something I can do for you, or would you like me to go get him?"

"I . . . um . . . I need to speak to Mr. Brown," the young man stammered, adding, "if you please?"

Will was puzzled at being the cause of such discomposure. He was also not expecting the astonishing shade of red the customer was turning—not a response he normally met from the smithy's clients.

At that moment, Joe breezed in from the back door. "Hey Will, could you . . . Oh!" He pulled up short. "Hello Rutherford! We've been expecting . . . I mean, how nice to see you, old chap!"

He held out a beefy paw from which, Will noticed, he hadn't bothered to clean the dust. The journeyman smith's fingers totally engulfed the limp, slender hand of the visitor. The young man's eyes bulged and his Adam's apple bobbled conspicuously on his long, thin neck.

"Hey, Father!" Joe hollered, apparently in high good humour. "We've got company!"

"I . . . I . . .don't m-mean to b-be a b-b-bother," the young man stuttered.

"No trouble at all," Joe continued to beam at the embarrassed youth. "We are very, extremely happy to see you."

"Th-thank you, I'm sure." The guest grew even more flustered if it were possible.

At that moment, Master Brown stumped into the shop. "Who have we here?" He caught sight of the nervous young man. "Ah! Mr. Nipps. Delighted to see you. What can I do for you today?"

Mr. Nipps gulped again. "A word, sir?"

"Of course, Mr. Nipps. What word?"

Will wanted to hear what became of this unprecedented conversation, but he really had no excuse to remain. Slowly, he returned to the lathe and his interrupted pommel.

He heard Mr. Nipps attempt to clarify, "A word in p-private, sir?"

"Certainly," the smith agreed jovially. "If you will join me for a drink in the parlour."

The two of them disappeared in the direction of the entrance to the house.

Joe waited until the door had closed behind the unfortunate Mr. Nipps. Then he let out a muffled whoop of laughter.

"What's so funny?" Will called from where he hadn't yet picked up his work.

"That poor gormless nodcock!" Joe chuckled. "He's here to ask my father's permission to come a-courtin' my sister."

A suitor for Susanna? Will hadn't really considered it, but the girl was nineteen going on twenty. Though he couldn't imagine her a married woman.

"Will your father agree?" he asked.

"Oh, of course." Joe shrugged. "Father knows the chit is partial to the lad—he's clean, you know." The journeyman smith held up his soot-stained hands to demonstrate the contrast. "An apothecary's son. Susanna's got no fondness for coal and iron. Thinks she'd like to have powders and potions for a change."

Joe busied himself with setting up a welding project on the work bench.

"It'll be a fine match," he told Will. "Nipps is the name and nips is the nature. The two of 'em will nip the farthings so tight they'll scream. You won't find them outrunning the constable. And for all her head is always in the clouds, Susanna knows how to keep household. Mother's seen to that. They've no womenfolk at the apothecary's house now, so they'll welcome her with open arms. Likely been poisoning themselves mixing concoctions in the cooking pots."

"He did seem very thin," Will observed, feeling unaccountably jealous of the young man who seemed likely to gain his heart's desire with the blessings of both families.

"Oh aye! All the Nipps have to run about in the rain to get wet. Not easy keepers, that's for certain. Susanna will never fatten him up. But then she likes 'em pale and ethereal—the melancholy Dane sort."

Joe transferred the wired billets of metal to the forge to bring them up to fire-welding temperature.

At that moment, the door from the house swung open, and Rutherford Nipps appeared, followed by the mastersmith. Master Brown was smiling benevolently, but Mr. Nipps was a transformed creature. He'd shed his nervous twitching and was beaming like the sun after a storm. Enthusiastically, he shook Master Brown's hand and waved to Joe. Then he fairly danced out of the shop.

Will returned to turning the pommel with all the ferocity of pent up frustration. He couldn't even imagine being free to address—a girl's—father on such a topic. Not after he'd been politely but unequivocally commanded to remember his station in life. He foresaw no such ecstatic happiness in his future. He hoped Mr. Nipps knew how fortunate he was.

* * *

Upon the official announcement of the engagement, the Brown household erupted into mayhem. Susanna's trousseau and household goods had to be provided. Heaps of fabric made perilous passage for the now unwelcome dirty smiths. Master Brown was lovingly crafting a set of cookware for his daughter, unwilling to admit that any of the apothecary's previous possessions would be adequate. Joe was responsible for the utensils. But Will thought that the dreamy Susanna would appreciate something less practical, so he spent his spare moments designing an elaborate candelabra. 

Emily, at age 11, had no patience with her sister's romance, particularly, she told Will, when it involved her having to hem leagues of linens. "I swear, Will Turner," Emily groused, "I have stabbed my fingers with that wretched needle a thousand times." She held up a stubby digit for his inspection. "I have sacrificed for my sister's crowded linen chest enough blood for a small war! And I'm always having to clean it off the fabric. Do you know," she demanded, "how hard it is to get blood stains out of linen?"

Will didn't know.

"I am never going to get married." Emily declared suddenly, apropos of nothing Will could see.

"What will you do then?" he asked.

"I shall be a prop for Mother and Father in their old age and then I shall keep house for my brothers." She grinned at Will. Emily had never ceased to consider him part of her family. "But I'm warning you in advance. I shan't do patchwork."

"You don't think Joe will find a wife?"

"Oh, Joe!" Emily dismissed her brother's matrimonial prospects with a snort. "If the woman isn't made of steel and doesn't look like a sword blade, he won't notice her."

Will reflected that while Emily was probably right about Joe's lack of interest in the topic, his responsibility to provide an heir might alter the situation.

Emily turned to eye him with her child's forthrightness. "You'll not be getting married either, will you?"

Will did not ask her where she'd acquired that notion, nor did he deny it.

"Then it's a good thing for me that you'll be keeping the house, isn't it?" he said instead.

"And I can hem lots of linens." Emily waved her abused fingers. "So I must go practice on Susanna's. Poor Susanna," she sighed. "To have only one sister, and that one all thumbs at needlework. But fortunately Mr. Nipps is so nearsighted he'll never notice, and she can put out Mother's work for company."

Seeing her mother appear in the smithy door, the ominous light of incipient chores gleaming in her eyes, Emily gave a little yelp and dashed off.

Will returned soberly to his forge work. Since his faintly stirring dreams were so impossible to fulfill, he thought, he might do worse for companionship than a little sister who wouldn't do patchwork.

* * *

Not all wedding related turmoil was unpleasant. Joe was responsible for leading Will astray with regards to snitching bits of wedding cake ingredients. The two of them would sneak into the kitchen, grab handfuls of raisins or nuts and dodge out again just ahead of flying wooden spoons. 

The kitchen was a wonderful place, redolent of spices and brandy and candied fruit as Susanna and Emily chopped and stirred to make the dense, dark cake. Slivers of it would be wrapped in cloth and slipped under the pillows of Susanna's friends hoping to dream of their future husbands. The women were of the firm opinion that this was no place for male intruders

But since the raiding party insisted on arriving, reinforcements were summoned.

"Mother!" the girls cried in outrage.

And Mistress Brown came sailing to the rescue, cornering her offending offspring and seizing him by the ear.

"Joseph Christopher Brown! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! A grown man being such a nuisance!" his mother scolded. "And you're corrupting this innocent boy!"

With a mouthful of raisins and guilty, sparkling eyes, Will was not looking in the least innocent.

"I swear, Mother," Joe's laugh rumbled. "It's entirely Will's fault."

Will made an indignant mumble around the raisins.

"Why he always looks so hungry and scrawny, I just have to help fatten him up." Joe roughed up Will's hair. Will swatted him away.

"It's my Christian duty," Joe added virtuously.

"Make them go away, Mother!" Susanna complained. "There won't be anything but flour and eggs in this cake if those two oafs have anything to do with it!"

"Am I going to have to inform your father that you have too much time on your hands?" Mistress Brown threatened.

"No! Not that! Anything but that!" Joe begged, theatrically contrite. "I'll be good. I promise."

"See that you do," his mother admonished, releasing his ear and aiming a maternal swat at her tall son. "Now take your great blacksmithy selves out of here and stop impeding progress."

Joe and Will beat a hasty, strategic retreat.

"Don't worry, Will," Joe assured him. "I can get Emily to give us the bowls to scrape."

* * *

The morning of the wedding dawned with a brisk breeze tossing the heads of the palms and chasing wisps of clouds across an eggshell blue sky. Will felt odd struggling out of his work clothes after his chores and into his good suit. It had once belonged to Joe—Will had never owned anything new, made just for him. He fought his uncomfortable neckcloth grimly into submission and tied his hair back, forcing its natural curl into severity. Then he bounded down the stairs, two at a time, to join the Brown family all looking equally stiff and unnatural in their finest clothes. 

The wedding breakfast would come after the service, but Mistress Brown took pity on her menfolk and let them snag several rolls to tide them over.

"I don't imagine I could stand this on an empty stomach," Joe confided to Will. "What a heap of unnecessary fuss folks make about a marriage. It's a waste of time, if you ask me—getting all gussied up and letting the work sit."

"I think you all look very fine," Emily insisted, although, she freely admitted to Will, she looked like a coconut in her best brown dress.

Will couldn't disagree with her. Emily was never going to be the beauty of the family. She still looked just like her father, with sandy brown hair that never would lie in glossy curls, but frizzed about her head. Her nose turned up too far and her blue eyes were too small, although very merry. And she would always be short and stocky. Full skirts did not suit her at all.

Susanna, on the other hand, was in her best looks this day, her pale, thin cheeks flushed, her wide gray eyes shining, and her sleek chestnut curls tumbling over her shoulders. In her new green dress and lace cap and fichu, she looked like the dawn of a perfect day over a jungle newly-washed with rain—luminous with promise. Mr. Nipps certainly seemed to appreciate the picture she made, smiling happily in spite of looking stuffed and nervous.

The Browns and Will had met the groom's family and the few close friends who would witness the ceremony at the parish church on the hill. Neither side had other family to attend.

The clergyman welcomed them. The bridal party filed into the church and solemnly took their places. Mr. Nipps and Miss Brown stood with their parents at the altar and the interminable marriage service began.

The age-old words drifted by Will's ears, registering only occasionally as he studied the faces around him. Joe looked bored. Emily looked even more bored. Mistress Brown looked faintly moist-eyed, and Master Brown blew his nose more than usual. The Nipps family, to a man, looked weedy and undernourished and earnest. No wonder the apothecary's apprentice was known for cadging scraps off the rest of his more fortunate brethren.

A phrase caught Will's attention. The vicar was asking Mr. Nipps to promise to love Susanna, "comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live."

A strange thought occurred to him. Had his parents once stood in such a church? Had his mother once ducked her head and blushed and looked up at his father through dark lashes as Susanna was doing now? Had his father once made these vows? Had he meant to keep them? He must have promised once to comfort her.

Will remembered being bundled into his warmest clothes and taken by the hand as the two of them trudged up the hill overlooking the harbour, and he remembered standing there as his mother looked out across the horizon until the cold and snow freezing his feet had made him cry. Then his mother would sigh and take his hand and they would return to their rooms. He remembered men following her sometimes, making remarks he had not understood then, causing his mother's face to flame and her shoulders to shake. He had been frightened as they had run for home. Will remembered huddling in his small cot, hearing his mother's muffled sobs in the nights after his father had left.

Looking at Mr. Nipps' narrow face, Will thought he could find it in himself to wring that young man's neck if he ever made Susanna cry the way Will's mother had.

Had William Turner, Senior, once vowed to keep his wife in sickness? Will remembered the last months of his mother's life. The heavy, ripping cough that seemed too harsh for her fragile body to contain. The bright blood on white linen, the red ensign signaling that this disease would give no quarter. He remembered her calling faintly for "Bill" as the clouds of death gathered, obscuring her from him. But his father had not been there to comfort her, and there had been nothing her son could offer as a substitute.

And yet his mother had always assured him that his father was a good man, one who provided for his family at the greatest personal sacrifice.

Love and marriage suddenly seemed far too complicated and serious. Shivering even in the stuffy little church, Will tried to concentrate on the service again. Some memories were better left packed away in camphor and the ashes of roses.

As he listened to Susanna promising to love, cherish, and obey her husband, Will couldn't help trying to imagine Elizabeth saying those same words—and failing utterly—at least he couldn't imagine her promising to obey anyone with the ardent sincerity of Susanna. Was Mr. Nipps worthy of such a vow? Had his father been? Was any man?

Elizabeth would choke on those words. She would have to say them when she married, but he could almost see the battle lights firing her eyes. And she would be breaking that vow within minutes of having made it. On purpose.

He smiled sadly at the thought. The man who won Elizabeth's love would have more than he deserved of her. Obedience would be superfluous.

Finally, the interminable sermonizing was over. The parish clerk recorded the marriage and collected the signatures of the witnesses. Susanna signed her maiden name one last time carefully next to her husband's in the registry. From now on, she would be Mistress Nipps.

The formalities being over, the entire assembly offered a collective sigh of release and boiled out of the church door. The family returned to the Brown residence for the breakfast of various breads and rolls, buttered toast, ham and eggs, and then the real festivities began. The cooper had offered the floor of his large storage shed for a dance, and a much larger crowd had gathered to enjoy the occasion.

The skipping, joyful notes of the fiddle, the lazy swirling smoke of tallow candles, and the warm human scent of friends shed of daily cares for this brief moment filled the dim rafters. Will observed the faces of people with whom he had become familiar since he'd accidentally landed in their midst four years ago. This was his home now—amidst this group of people who shared each other's griefs and joys, who squabbled and supported each other.

"C'mon, Will!" Emily was tugging at his hand. "Find someone to dance with before they start the first set!"

Will allowed himself to be pulled into the group assembling for the country dance.

* * *

Master Brown, who had perhaps been celebrating a little freely, claimed his wife for the third dance. "Let's show these children how it's really done." 

Mistress Brown laughed and blushed like a girl as he bowed over her hand. She demurred at first but soon gave in eagerly. The two of them joined the set of younger dancers forming. Their children watched, bemused, as their parents twirled and swung about the floor. Master Brown's curly hair escaped its slicking down and stood up wildly, and soft silver-brown wisps blew about Mistress Brown's flushed face. They could have appeared a little odd, the short, barrel-shaped man and his taller, slender wife, but instead, Will thought he'd never seen two people look more right together. In the low light of the shed, the years peeled away and they might have been young lovers.

Will would always remember them this way: Mistress Brown giggling and pushing damp strands of hair from her forehead, Master Brown smiling in fond pride at his still lovely wife, whirling through the measured patterns of the dance.

That afternoon, after the festivities had died down and Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford Nipps had driven away in a borrowed wagon loaded with Susanna's possessions, including the much maligned linen chest, amidst the cheers and flying shoes of their well-wishers, the remainder of the Brown family had wended its way back to the smithy.

* * *

The house had been a little emptier with Susanna gone. The dance of life was pulling the family gradually farther apart, its members stepping out into their own rhythms. Susanna had begun her own dance. Joe would be the next to alter his steps away from the smithy. 

Shortly after the household had settled down from the wedding, Joe had approached his father with a proposition. He wished to make the journey back to England.

"There's a clockmaker named Benjamin Huntsman in Sheffield, Yorkshire, who has discovered a new method for making higher quality steel in large quantities," he informed his father. "I want to learn his methods or at least arrange a supply for our smithy."

At first Master Brown had been reluctant to let his son go. The two of them argued the idea back and forth while Will listened, intrigued, as he paused in his work.

"Listen to me!" Joe's normally stolid voice was impassioned. "Right now, to make our steel, iron bars are heated in stone boxes with layers of charcoal for an entire week. And look at it!" He tossed a bar each to his father and Will.

Will turned the bar in his hands, running his fingers over the uneven blisters on the surface, automatically judging it.

"Not a one of these bars of blister steel," Joe waved at the stack, "has any measurable or consistent quality. We have to bundle these things and heat them and hammer forge them into shear steel before we can actually use them."

He began pacing around the smithy, energy flying off him like sparks. "Now this Huntsman, they say, has developed a process whereby he can make steel ingots—ingots!—in only three hours! And that crucible steel, as he's calling it, is far harder and far less brittle than shear steel."

Joe spun and planted his hands on the edge of the workbench across from his father. "Think about it! High quality steel in three hours!" He thumped the bench with his fists, rattling the tools hanging there. "The bloody English idiots are refusing to purchase his steel, so the man has been selling to the French!"

He resumed his pacing. "I've seen one of those French blades." His eyes held the glazed over look of a man in love.

Will reflected that Emily was rather insightful about her brother's scale of priorities.

"What a beauty!" Joe enthused, completely besotted. "And a dozen times as strong as one of our blades."

He turned back to his father. "But I intend to change that."

* * *

The idea had been discussed by the whole family; objections had been raised and combated. Finally, however, the remaining Browns had trooped down to the docks to wave farewell as Joe had embarked on a year's leave. He'd been carrying a significant sum of money to negotiate shipment of as much crucible steel as he could acquire. Upon his return to Jamaica, he would take up his mastery of the craft of blacksmith and join his father as a full partner. 

"Will here is perfectly capable of pulling my weight in the smithy." Joe had slapped Will on the back. "And when I return, we'll make the blades of Brown and Son famous from here to Damascus!"

TBC


	8. Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 5

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 3: Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part V

By Honorat

Rating: K

Disclaimer: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer PotC, pick up the characters in Port Royal, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out!

Summary: You all knew it had to happen. Welcome to the path to destruction. Angst alert. Fasten your seatbelts. Please keep your arms and head inside the vehicle. The story of Will and Master Brown. More movie novelization and missing scenes. Still entirely off the edge of the map.

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

Six months after Joe had departed Port Royal, a delivery wagon from the harbour arrived at the smithy with a shipment of crucible steel from Sheffield, England. Packed in with the crates of steel was one crate containing four odd clay vessels. One hadn't survived the passage, but the others were intact. A letter in Joe's scrawl, enclosed with them, shed some light on the mystery.

_Tell Will these are for him to experiment with. Huntsman is as hard to crack as a fire-weld. He guards his secret like it's his hope of heaven. I spoke to an iron founder named Walker who is the only outsider who has ever made it inside Huntsman's works. He rigged himself out as a tramp and picked a snowstorm in which to arrive, claiming to be ill. The workers took pity on him and let him sleep in a corner where he spied on them. He tells me that Huntsman uses a coke-fired furnace to heat clay crucibles like these containing iron to white heat. Then they're charged with bits of blister steel and a flux of broken glass. Three hours later the impurities are skimmed off and the molten steel is poured into ingots. The proportions are a mystery. So have fun young William. Meanwhile, I've arranged for a regular shipment of crucible steel for the smithy. Can't let the French beat us out._

That evening, after his day's work was complete, Will returned eagerly to the opened crates that had been calling him all afternoon. Reverently he lifted one of the steel ingots. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on its weight in his hands, its pure, clear, hard perfection. He breathed in the fragrance of metal warming in his hands. This was magnificent steel. He'd never felt steel with such an unclouded presence. His hands itched to try working it.

Looking up, he saw Master Brown smiling at him in understanding. "Go ahead, Will. I know you wouldn't taste your meal anyway. I'll tell Mistress Brown not to expect you."

Will grinned in elation at the mastersmith. "Thank you, sir!"

Brown nodded at him. "You're a good lad, Will Turner. You have the makings of a fine smith, perhaps even a great one."

His heart singing under the unaccustomed praise, Will turned back to the alluring steel.

He did not know what hour of the night or morning it was when he straightened and stretched his cramping muscles and contemplated the folded steel ready to be worked into a blade on the morrow—or later today, whatever it was. Still holding the shaping hammer in his hand, he rubbed his eyes with the back of one grimy wrist. His body felt empty—of strength, of volition, of emotion—as though he had spent it all on the steel, infused himself into the swirling pattern in an unseen seam of spiritual ore.

This steel was unlike any he had ever worked before—recalcitrant, adamantine hard, thwarting all attempts to drive it into a shape. He'd never had to have such patience with a metal, never had to listen harder to what it wanted to be. But finally he had broken through whatever was barricading him from understanding this fierce new medium. Finally they had ceased to resist each other. Finally, he had succeeded in surrendering to the steel, in allowing it to mold itself in his hands. When he held what he knew was the most perfect thing he had ever created, shivers ran through him like the tremors of an ague. His breath came light and fast as though he had been running. Surely molten metal was flowing through his veins. If he cut himself, he would bleed fire. He did not feel joy or accomplishment or pride—merely an overwhelming, elemental sense of new life.

Master Brown found him still standing by the forge in the morning, rapt as an acolyte in a vision.

"That good, is it?" he inquired.

Startled out of his reverie, Will stared at his master, gradually processing the question. A slow smile dawned on his pale, tired face. "Oh yes," he said. "It's very good."

* * *

The spring that the smithy of J. Brown began to turn out unsurpassed swords made of the finest steel, a foe impervious to the sharpest blade stalked through the streets of Port Royal. The air was thick with the choking odour of tar burning in the streets. A slow trickle of fearful people bled out of the town, trying to escape.

The conversations of Mistress Brown and her gossips ceased to revolve around children and husbands and produce and fashions. Instead Will heard snippets of grim stories.

"Margery Bidley over on Market is very ill, and a man at the shoemakers next door to the Pages!"

"There is a man next door but one who Dr. Branigan says will quickly die of this horrible disorder!"

"Master Stimpson and his family are moved out of town."

"Poor Sarah Peabody died yesterday."

Down at the docks, Will saw slave women paddling canoes up to newly arrived ships from which British colonists were disembarking. With gleeful sarcasm they chanted:

"New come buckra

He get sick.

He tak fever.

He be die!"

They could laugh, for everyone knew that African slaves were immune to the dreaded yellow fever.

Meanwhile, upwards of 70 persons in the town were stricken by the disease. Each Sunday, the vicar prayed that the alarming fever now prevalent might be abated if it pleased kind Providence so to order.

But it did not please Providence, and the disease continued to rage.

Willingly, the Brown family and Will endured being dosed with Daffy's elixir and vinegar on a sponge with a sprig of wormwood in the hopes of staving off the putrid and bilious fever. They walked as little as possible in the lower streets, but the precautions proved ineffectual.

One morning Master Brown eyed his wife's flushed face with concern. "Are you feeling quite well, dear?" he asked.

"Just a touch of the headache," she admitted, rubbing her temples. "I'll be fine."

The mastersmith slipped an arm around her waist. "Then you should lie down. Emily will bring you some tea. She's a young lady now, twelve years old, and quite capable of managing the house for a little while."

Mistress Brown rested her head on his. "Perhaps I shall. Just for a minute."

She did not, however, recover in a few minutes. Instead, by the end of the day, fear coiled in the corners of the smithy and set its fangs into the hearts of the little family. Yellow fever had struck. The overworked, harried Port Royal doctor was called.

The doctor placed Mistress Brown on a regimen calculated, so he said, to dilute the blood, correct the acrimony of the humours, allay the excessive heat, remove the spasmodic stricture of the vessels, and promote secretions. Only liquids and very light foods such as fruits and gruel. No animal food.

Faithfully Emily prepared the special diet and sprinkled her mother's chamber with vinegar, juice of lemon and rose-water with a little nitre dissolved in it. Daily, Master Brown bathed his wife's feet and hands in lukewarm water. Will took the brunt of the labour and ran the forge almost entirely on his own.

They learned then that Susanna had also been stricken by the disease. Perhaps she and her mother had run across some foul air on a trip to the market together. The burning tar was not driving it out fast enough.

After the third day, Mistress Brown appeared to rally. Her fever went down and she felt well enough to move around a little. But the doctor was not encouraged. Yellow jack was tricky that way. Often a patient would seem to be regaining his health when the disease would strike a second time with far more deadly results.

In this, the doctor proved to be correct. The next day, Mistress Brown collapsed into bed again, her fever raging higher than before, her pulse tumultuous. When the symptoms of inflammation did not decrease, and her pulse remained quick and hard, the doctor recommended bleeding, although not more than a patient of her strength could endure. As the fever rose, he repeated the procedure a second and later a third time to no avail. Mistress Brown continued to deteriorate.

Joseph Brown did not leave his wife's side those final seven days as her once clear skin turned the characteristic jaundiced yellow of the disease that was rotting her from within, as the putrified blood oozed from her gums, nose, and ears—from every orifice in fact. In the last few days, he held her while her body purged the terrifying black and bloody vomit, while her mind wandered in delirium and she no longer knew he was there, while convulsions racked her wasted frame. And finally, he sat beside her, holding her hand and talking to her as she lay immobile and comatose. That night she died in his arms.

Susanna died two days later.

The two of them were buried in the church yard next to three small markers where lay Brown children Will had never known—two girls, ages four and five, who had died in an outbreak of dengue fever ten years ago, and a stillborn baby boy who would have been older than Joe, had he lived. There was no place for Gordon who rested somewhere at sea.

Will stood with Emily and Master Brown as the plain boxes were lowered into the dark graves. Father and daughter seemed smaller than ever to Will. After his first meeting with the mastersmith, he had never again noticed the man's height—his spirit was too large, his personality too expansive, his skill so towering that his apprentice had always looked up to him even when Will had grown head and shoulders taller. But now the man seemed shrunken, as if half of himself were being buried in that crumbling earth.

The three of them returned to the house above the smithy to find that it was no longer home, that no amount of candles could lighten the shadows, that no voices could lift the long silences. It was as if the spirit of the house had died of the yellow fever as well, leaving only wood and stone and loneliness.

* * *

That night Will knew he should stop working. It was long past when he usually retired to his room in the attic, and he was so exhausted nothing he was working on was worth the coal it would take to reduce it to slag. But he couldn't endure the thought of the stillness high under the eaves.

"Will?"

He looked up, startled, to see Emily standing in the doorway. Her normally rosy face was pale, her eyes haunted and circled with shadows. A twelve-year-old should not look so. Will remembered losing his own mother when he had been Emily's age. He'd felt as though all solid ground was crumbling beneath his feet.

"Emily." He crossed to her with a single quick stride. "What's wrong?" he asked gently, although he knew.

"What isn't wrong?" her child's voice held a bitter adult wrench to it. If she'd been Susanna, dreamy, passionate Susanna, who rested silently now in the churchyard, she'd have wept and thrown herself into his arms. Being Emily, she stood awkwardly in the door, suffering alone and in silence.

"Come here, Emily," Will invited impulsively. "I could use some help."

Curiousity burned away a little of the numb look in her eyes. "What can I do, Will?"

It struck Will that it was always Emily who had fluttered about the edges of the smithy like a small, dusty brown moth. Her mother had constantly rebuked her for leaving her own work undone until Emily had brought her patchwork into the forge. "I hate patchwork," she'd confided to Will, "but if I do it here, at least it will be bearable."

When she'd watched her father and brother work, her eyes had held the same sparkle as theirs in the flicker of the forge.

"Here," he said, digging out his old apron that had also been Joe's. "Put this on. Let me show you how to make a nail."

Yes, he'd guessed rightly. Fascination superseded grief in her face as she shrugged into the stiff, heavy leather that hung down to her toes. Will had to smile at the sight. She took the hammer he handed her and weighed it in her hand, shifting it until she found its balance.

Removing a bar from the forge with a pair of tongs, Will asked, testing her knowledge, "Is this ready to draw out?"

"No," she answered firmly. "It's only cherry heat—too cold."

Will raised a brow. Emily had obviously been paying attention. He replaced the bar and encouraged the donkey to power up the bellows. The next time he withdrew the bar it was a bright orange-red. "How's this?"

"That's just right." The corners of her mouth turned up in a ghost of a smile.

Will nodded. "Good. Now I'll hold the bar on the face of the anvil and you try out the hammer. This time you'll just be testing the way of the hammer against the metal. Don't try to force it down. Swing from your shoulder and let its own weight do your work."

Two hours later, Will was even more exhausted and Emily was flushed with triumph as she displayed a rather large, ungainly nail in the palm of her hand. Remembering his own first attempts, Will admitted that she'd done reasonably well.

Gazing down at her achievements—one nail, two blisters, and a burn—Emily reflected, "My father always told me smithing was no task for a girl."

"Well, he's right that you'll not be keeping those pretty hands if you spend much time with the hammer and tongs," Will admitted.

"Oh!" Emily flared up. "Of what use are pretty hands?" She held up her nail. "Of course there's not much use in this nail, either."

Will opened his mouth to demur, but she forestalled him. "You're being very polite, Will Turner, but I'm a blacksmith's daughter, and I know apprentice work from masterwork. This barely qualifies as apprentice work. About the only thing this could be used for is hanging the scrap pail for the chickens. But it's a start. It's evidence that a really useful nail is at least a possibility."

Will smiled at her. "It's not just a possibility. It's a certainty. You _are_ a blacksmith's daughter."

Emily blushed at this, as she never would have over a compliment to her looks or her stitching.

"Whenever you feel the urge to hammer something," Will offered, "come on down, and you can make another nail."

She looked at him measuringly. "Does it help? To hit things."

"Sometimes."

"But the difference with you, Will Turner, is that when you hit things, you don't destroy. You create."

Without considering his words, Will said. "That's the only way any of it makes sense."

Emily paused in the doorway, an arrested look on her face. "Yes. You're right, of course." She turned to go, then looked back over her shoulder. "Thank you," she said simply. "You've a kind heart, Will Turner."

Will did not have to ask for what she was grateful. He knew. Now, he thought, he could bear to climb up to his solitary room and rest.

* * *

Over the next months, Emily spent at the forge any spare time she could squeeze from the burden of household responsibilities now resting on her young shoulders. At first Will did not think Master Brown even noticed his daughter was there. The man seemed to be drifting in a fog, not really seeing anything that was around him, going through the motions of smithing by rote. But one day, he'd simply asked Emily to hold a piece of work for him as though she had always been his apprentice. Emily had glowed for hours after that.

Will continued to teach her in the long, otherwise unbearably silent evenings, and soon she was consistently producing respectable nails. He'd been guiltily grateful to pass along that task to her. She was inordinately proud of her gradually roughening and darkening hands, counting smugly each fingernail that chipped off. And indeed, Emily, who had always been the plain one, achieved a strange kind of beauty as she planted her sturdy little figure beside the anvil, her sleeves rolled up on her short arms, and her tousled hair haloed by the firelight of the forge.

* * *

Will was showing Emily how to forge a chain link late one night. Emily was as out of temper as he, the two of them snapping at each other desultorily. She couldn't do anything right and her frustration was increasing. For Will, himself, the work refused to cooperate. His hands felt stiff and aching and unskilled—about as clever as pigs of iron. The heat of the forge burned his eyes so he had to turn away. Suddenly, the entire smithy turned a cartwheel and disappeared. The fever had claimed another victim.

The next few weeks were a blur of intense misery through which floated strange faces and familiar ones he couldn't name. His flesh felt as though fire consumed him from under his skin, as if, were he touched, he would crumble to powdery ash. Then the fever grew worse, and Will was sure, when he was conscious at all, that the sparks would soon fly off his body as the hammer blows raining down on his flesh unmade him entirely.

He awoke finally, too weak at first to notice, but eventually realizing that no member of the smith's family came to see him. When he asked after them, none of the strangers who cared for him would tell him where they were.

When he grew strong enough to sit up in bed, his nurse, a slave woman in the household of the governor had he but known (Elizabeth was still insisting on taking care of Will Turner), informed him that the mastersmith was also recuperating, but that Emily had joined her mother and her brother and sisters in the little churchyard on the hill. He was a fortunate young man to have survived.

Will did not feel fortunate. As soon as the woman had gone, he turned his face to the wall and wept silently for the only little sister he'd ever had.

The minute he was allowed up, he dragged himself into the silent, dark shop, lit the fire and stirred up the donkey. When the forge was burning white hot, Will wired the bars of iron and crucible steel together. He had no one now to help him hold them. Thrusting the metal into the forge, he heated it until the sparks were spraying him like tears of fire. And then he began to "hit things," over and over, reheating the metal each time to fire-welding temperature.

This would, he vowed, be the most beautiful sword he'd ever made. It would be shorter and lighter, a lady's blade. For Emily's sake, he would wrest creation out of all this destruction. As he folded the steel with the iron until the pattern rippled like water down the blade, the salt sweat of his face was indistinguishable from the salt of his tears.

They found him collapsed by the anvil, the fire going cold, with the unshaped blade hugged to his chest. They'd had to put him to bed with it, for he would not let it go.

After that setback, Will had been watched and thwarted whenever he showed a tendency to want to return to work. Master Brown was now up, but Will did not recognize him any longer. A stranger looked out of those blue eyes. The only comfort the smith seemed to find was in the dark liquid depths of a flagon of ale. Will hoped that when they were allowed back to work, the mastersmith would be able to re-forge his broken life as Will had done six years before.

* * *

For Will, the greatest benefit of his extended convalescence and banishment from work was that he was able to see Elizabeth—Miss Swann—more than he had in years. Since Elizabeth had suffered a mild bout of yellow fever the first year she had come to the Caribbean, she was immune to the disease—as if even the dreaded yellow jack did not dare inconvenience the imperious Miss Swann. After her first visit to Will, the nurse had made the mistake of commenting to her that Will looked much improved.

After that, nothing her father could say kept her from taking care of Will Turner. Nevertheless, Will was always mindful of the governor's strictures, trying to stay polite and respectful, to keep his place and his distance. Elizabeth, however, made this task extremely difficult. She refused to be polite or respected, and she ignored distance—she was still his childhood friend, full of fun and plots and mischief. Her presence was an acute pleasure and her visits an agony of denial.

Elizabeth was not allowed in the house, but she and Will, followed by the sympathetic Estrella, who had been roped into trying to keep pace with her hoyden mistress for propriety's sake, would wander along the shore, poking curiously into every shore worker's business, tasting anything cooking that was offered, making any number of unsuitable acquaintances. Fresh air and mild exercise had been suggested by the doctor, so the two of them took every advantage of the excuse. Gradually, Will found himself beginning to laugh again.

TBC


	9. Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 6a

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 3: Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part VIa

By Honorat

Rating: K+

Disclaimer: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer PotC, pick up the characters in Port Royal, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out!

Summary: Will and Elizabeth have a teen-aged moment and one perfect day. Estrella gets a few prematurely gray hairs. An interlude to relieve the tragedy in the story of the fall of J. Brown. More movie novelization and missing scenes. Still entirely off the edge of the map.

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 6a

By Honorat

At last, the doctor pronounced Will fit to return to work. Will's feelings were not unalloyed with regret as he walked back to the smithy after escorting Elizabeth home. His life would again be swallowed in the unrelenting labour of the forge. Elizabeth would have no more excuse to visit him. Hearing the clatter of hooves behind him, he stepped aside to allow the governor's carriage to pass. To his surprise, the vehicle halted, the footman leaped to the horses' heads. The governor leaned one elegant hand on the window frame of the door and peered out.

"A moment of your time, Mr. Turner?" Governor Swann requested graciously.

"Of course, sir," Will said, although he felt the stir of unease that always accompanied his coming to the attention of Elizabeth's father.

"I suppose you're wondering why I've detained you like this?" the governor asked.

"Yes, sir?" Will's tone was questioning.

Seeming to switch to an entirely new topic, the governor said, "The doctor tells me that you will be returning to work in two days."

Will nodded. "Yes, sir." Why had the governor been discussing his condition with the doctor?

"Good. That is very good." Governor Swann beamed. "I am glad to hear you are fit again."

"Thank you, sir."

There was a brief pause. The governor cleared his throat. "I understand my daughter has been very charitable to you in your convalescence,"

Will's sense of humour nearly betrayed him into an inappropriate smile. The amusement was pungently bitter-edged. He supposed charity was one term for it.

"Miss Swann has been most considerate, sir," he said, politely subservient.

"I trust you understand that her visits will have to cease now," the governor said, with a kindness that drew like knives through Will's soul.

"Of course, sir. I am very grateful to her," he answered, striving to remain unmoved.

"The wife of a very dear friend, Lady Ingleham, has invited Elizabeth to spend the season at their plantation on St. Kitts. My daughter will make her debut in society under her aegis," the governor explained.

Will's brows drew together in puzzlement. Why was he being given this information? "I am sure that is very kind of Lady Ingleham. Miss Swann must be very happy."

His own heart, however, plummeted even further. Elizabeth was going away. He would no longer be granted the opportunity to see her even from a distance.

"Elizabeth is not happy at all," Governor Swann groused parentally. "I have let that child run far too wild for far too long. But she shall go, nonetheless. I can trust Lady Ingleham to remove all unsuitable notions from her head. A woman of impeccable taste."

Ah. So that was the problem. Again. Will wondered what Elizabeth had said that had resurrected that spectre in the governor's mind.

"Sir," Will said softly, "if you wish to discover whether or not I remember our conversation of two years past, suffice it to say that I do. The difference between Miss Swann's station and my own is perfectly evident to me. You have no cause for concern."

"Well now." The governor cleared his throat again. "That is very good of you, Mr. Turner. You are a fine young man."

The moment stretched out awkwardly. Will longed to be as far away as possible, some place where he did not have to keep up this polite mask that was nearly paralyzing his face.

Finally, Will broke the silence. "If that is all, sir, may I bid you good day? I shall have an early morning tomorrow."

The governor seemed relieved. "Yes, of course. I shall not keep you any longer. Good day, Mr. Turner."

"Good day, Governor Swann."

The footman vaulted back onto the carriage, and the gray horses drew it away with swift, staccato steps, dappled flanks flashing, leaving Will in the dust.

He continued his journey down the hill, moving faster until he was nearly running. But he could not escape his thoughts. All things had their endings. And this was theirs. The end of their idyll. Elizabeth would be whisked away from him like a valuable painting from an open flame. She would be reabsorbed into her own world, as he would be into his. With his tasks at the smithy conspiring to devour his time, and her father conspiring to surfeit her time with amusement, the two of them would drift apart. When he saw her again, she would have assumed her place in her world, as far above him as the polar star from the restless sea.

As must happen, he reminded himself. This interlude was naught but a dreamlike interruption of their real lives. Like the fever-mad nightmares, it would fade into memory, replaced by the glaring light of inescapable reality.

Elizabeth had never shown any talent for accepting reality. So it would be up to him to accept it for both of them.

Suddenly it was more than he could bear. Will had never stood against the pressures of his life. He had always flowed gracefully aside, all smooth surface with treacherous currents well-hidden, often even from himself. But water will eventually wear away stone, and that afternoon a crack appeared in the granite.

If this was to be their last day together before the currents of their lives swept them apart again, if the worst thing that could happen to them had already been promised, then he would seize that day in both hands and carve it into a monument of memory. Too soon, the restraints would chain them back in their respective cages. But for one golden day, he would give in to Elizabeth's total disregard for all restraint. He would forget who Elizabeth was, who he was. They would have one last perfect day, as if they were still children immune to scandal, one day to carry down those separate paths they would be forced to tread.

Will set out purposefully for the docks.

Governor Swann would not have recognized the look in the respectful blacksmith's eyes—the fire was unbanked.

* * *

Estrella, who had it firmly entrenched in her mind that Will Turner was a good lad who would never step over the line of appropriate behaviour, was well into lending her countenance to the adventure before little warning flags began to run up her subconscious. There was something unsettling about the boy this morning.

The night before had been a stormy one at the governor's residence, with Elizabeth protesting that she had no desire to go on parade for the marriage mart. But for once the tempestuous Miss Swann had failed to sway her indulgent parent. To St. Kitts she would go and that was final. That morning had found Elizabeth as close to the sulks as such a straightforward girl could be. It had been a relief to all concerned when she had insisted on one last walk along the shore with that blacksmith.

Leaving her household to begin the flurry of preparations—she cared nothing for what ridiculous garments they chose to send with her—Elizabeth set out, Estrella in tow, for the shore. They met Will halfway there. Elizabeth came out from under her cloud and began to shine again the minute he told her they would be doing something different that afternoon.

"Where are we going?" she begged, all coquettish entreaty and dark, beseeching eyes.

"It's a surprise," Will grinned at her and set out with his long strides that made Estrella trot to keep up.

"Will I like it?" Elizabeth persisted, intrigued by this new side of her childhood friend.

"Oh yes," Will assured her. "You'll like it."

"Does my father know about it?" she asked curiously as they turned aside from their usual path along the shore and instead made their way towards the docks.

Will looked at her, his eyes unguarded and kindling. "He most certainly does not."

"Oh, Will!" Elizabeth clapped her hands. "Would he disapprove?"

Will raised an eloquent eyebrow and tilted his chin warningly towards their out-of-breath follower.

Elizabeth covered her mouth, sharing a conspiratorial glance with him. She crowded close to him, and he dipped his head down close enough to inhale the fragrance of her hair. Banishing every customary conscientious qualm, he whispered wickedly, for her ears only, "He would be violently displeased, my lady."

Giving a trill of laughter and a childish skip, Elizabeth exclaimed, "Then I already love it!"

She was bouncing in anticipatory circles around Will and Estrella by the time they reached a dilapidated dock on the edge of which sat an equally dilapidated and disreputable sailor with a peg leg, holding a painter attached to a real sea-going vessel. The man turned at their approach, his face crinkling into the hundreds of dark little lines belonging to a grin missing far too many teeth for charm.

"Aftahnoon, Will. Ladies," he said.

"Good afternoon, Aaron," Will greeted him holding out a hand to shake the elderly man's. He turned to Elizabeth. "Miss Swann, meet Aaron and your boat for the afternoon."

"Oh," Elizabeth breathed, her eyes wide with delight. She nearly tumbled off the dock in her enthusiasm.

Estrella mentally added another gray hair. She was too young for gray hairs.

"What's her name?" Elizabeth asked, oblivious to her own peril as Will took a firm hold of her arm.

"_Pig_," the man said firmly.

"_Pig_?" Elizabeth asked incredulously. "Why did you name her that?"

"Coz tha's wot her sails like. A damn pig. Beggin' yo pahdon," he said with fond relish.

Elizabeth eyed him as if she wasn't sure he was serious, but indeed, the name PIG was scrawled in limping, spavined letters on the boat's stern.

Estrella eyed the boat as if she hoped very sincerely that Will wasn't serious. "I really don't think . . ." she started helplessly. "Miss Elizabeth, what would your father say if . . ." That was the wrong thing to mention this day.

Her high-spirited charge tossed her head at the mention of her father and let Will help her into the boat.

Estrella hovered and fluttered on the dock like a hen that has hatched a duckling. "Oh do be careful, Mr. Turner," she begged. "Oh you shouldn't . . ."

Will turned to help the poor woman follow Elizabeth.

With the air of a saint going to her martyrdom, Estrella gave in to the inevitable. "Please don't let it rock!" was her only weak protest. She settled with a distraught moan on the grimy cushions Aaron had strewn in the bottom of his boat for the ladies. "I do so hate water."

Aaron popped in with surprising alacrity for a one-legged man, and Will scrambled in after and shoved off from the dock.

The breeze was fair and light, and the boat easily caught it in her gaff-rigged sail and topsail and headed out of the harbour. The _Pig_ was not one of the tall, graceful ladies of the sea—more like a short, dumpy little working girl, actually—but she bobbed along merrily and puffed out her canvas as though she were very well pleased with herself. Elizabeth loved her.

As Aaron directed their craft through the silken pats of the small wavelets, Elizabeth watched him intently. Leaning close to Will, she whispered hopefully, "Do you think he's a pirate?"

"No! Of course not!" Will was horrified. As if he'd ever put her in any danger! But she looked so disappointed that he relented a little. If believing this man was a pirate would make her happy, he had no intention of spoiling her fun. "Perhaps he was a pirate before he lost his leg," Will suggested.

Elizabeth brightened and stared at their pilot in renewed fascination.

Dark eyes glittering in his seamed black face, Aaron shared a grin with his young lady passenger.

When the _Pig_ had scooted out of the harbour and round the point into the open sea, Will called to Aaron, "The lady would like to try her hand at sailing."

"Oh yes! May I?" Elizabeth exclaimed, rocking the boat and causing Estrella to shriek faintly.

Eyeing the girl dubiously, Aaron seemed about to refuse, but Will reminded him, "I'm paying you for your time." Will had spent the entire pittance of his life savings on this outing. The flash of a half crown completed the man's change of heart.

Eagerly, Elizabeth clambered over piles of fishing nets, buckets, and a stray lobster pot to join Aaron at the stern. Grudgingly, he showed her how to control the rudder and the sails. When he finally left her alone with one hand on the mainsheet, the other on the worn teak tiller, Aaron had the cringing look of a man who expects any moment to be whacked on the head by a wild swing of the boom.

However, Elizabeth had not forgotten her time aboard the _Dauntless_ six years earlier. She had more theoretical knowledge than practical experience, but this, Will thought, was where her heart lay. He could see in her eyes that rapt introspection he felt when he handled steel. The sea had always been Elizabeth's passion.

Gradually, Aaron relaxed as it became apparent that Elizabeth was not going to swamp them. She didn't always know what to do, but she was sensitive to what the ship was doing—something a hopeless landlubber wouldn't be. His grin returned and he grew voluble, gesturing widely, praising and scolding with equal facility as he showed Elizabeth how to tack and gibe, how to watch the surface of the water for clues about what the wind was doing further ahead, how to read the motions of the sails and adjust them for the best results.

For some time Elizabeth sailed the little _Pig_ in large squares, happy as a grig, while Will drank in every moment of this time with her like a condemned man does his last sight of freedom. The wind combed its fine fingers through her curls, rippling them like liquid gold. Estrella's remonstration that her charge should wear her hat drowned unheard. Elizabeth did not care if she wore new freckles to her coming out ball. She shook her head and mussed her hair even further.

Will's senses feasted on the music of her laugh as a capricious wave splashed over the bow, on the grace of her movements as she slipped the bulky, awkward craft sweetly through the sea, on the glitter of sunlight on the fine fair hairs of her arms, on the faraway, enraptured expression in her dark eyes as she looked out to the horizon.

It would be a crime to chain such a wondrous creature to a parlour and the mundane responsibilities of a household, to the life of a fashionable young woman, when she was so clearly meant to be set as free as the wind on the water.

The future hovered for a moment, shadowing the bright Caribbean day. Tomorrow he would return to a life made desolate—to unremitting loss. Tomorrow Elizabeth would set forth on a path that would lead her inexorably away from him and towards the constraint of her destiny. The happy child playing here today would be gone forever. He would not know the woman who emerged. With effort, Will shook off the chill that touched him. He would let neither the past nor the future spoil this day.

Will leaned his head back against the _Pig_'s gunnel, closing his eyes and letting the sun warm his face. The plash of the water on the hull, the brush of wind in his hair, the tang of fresh salt air in his lungs relaxed him, uncoiling some of the tension in him, banishing it back to Port Royal where it belonged. It was such a relief, for this brief moment, to be free.

* * *

Growing more adventurous by the moment, Elizabeth sent the _Pig_ capering along the Jamaican shoreline. The little boat seemed to approve of her for she gave no sign of being piggish. The smooth, viridian flanks of the island framed the entire stretch of one horizon, fading gently to deep blue in the distance. Volcanic rocks jutted out of the shimmering, turquoise water, providing navigational excitement for an inexperienced pilot. The white encrusted black outcroppings cried and chattered and shrieked with the voices of their seething coating of seabirds. Up close the noise was an ear-wrenching cacophony, but as the boat drew past, the dissonance melted into the music of the sea. A small fleet of fishing boats off their starboard bow was attended by swarm of gulls like flecks of sunlight dancing in an impossibly blue sky. In her attempt to see everything around her all at once, Elizabeth had to be rescued from a wrong heading several times.

Will contributed to her distraction by pointing out fascinating wonders below the surface. Looking through the transparent, glittering water, he was mesmerized by a world he rarely had a chance to observe. The water fractured and swirled his view of brightly-coloured schools of fish, and farther down, the mottled patterns of pale sand and deep blue reefs. The shadow of their little boat chased along the ocean floor beneath them.

Poor Estrella had a heart-stopping moment when her two charges lunged for the lee side of the boat, shipping salt water, in their eagerness to stare at a hawksbill sea turtle gliding alongside them in leisurely curiosity. And they all had to dodge an unexpected swing of the boom when the giant black cross of a frigatebird sailed serenely overhead in its never-ending flight.

Trailing one hand in the ripple of the bow wave, Will enjoyed the liquid press of cool water on his sun-heated skin. Beads of salt spray clung to his forearm, chilling in the breeze. He felt as though two fathoms of water lay in insulation between himself and the events of the last few months. The release from that weight left him feeling buoyant and breathless.

Far away, to starboard, the edge of the sea faded nearly to white and then blended gently into the azure heavens. Will could almost imagine turning the bow of their little ship towards the rim of the world and chasing the sun down that horizon. A vague, uneasy sense of longing for some unknown destination, some unexplored and silent sea twisted in his soul.

* * *

As the afternoon drifted towards evening and the light lengthened over the sea, the chop increased until the _Pig _began to wallow.

"Bring 'er about now, lass," Aaron advised. "Time t' take th' ol' gal home."

While Elizabeth wrestled the increasingly aptly named boat around, Aaron kept up a running commentary on the art of meeting the higher seas with the prow. The _Pig_ sashayed back and forth as she rode up one wave and down the other side.

Will was the one who noticed that Estrella was beginning to look uneasy, her face gone pale and greenish, her eyes large and dark.

"Are you well?" Will asked, concerned, leaning towards her.

She tried to give him a faint courageous smile. "No. Not in the least. I hate water!" And then she was bending over the side of the boat as her stomach revolted.

Slipping his arm around her in support, Will called to Aaron, "We must get her to shore as quickly as possible!"

Without protest, Elizabeth moved aside to allow the more experienced seaman to send the _Pig _hurtling along at her best speed.

As the little boat skipped over the waves, jolting against the larger swells, Estrella moaned and was sick again. Will continued to hold her, murmuring encouragement, while Elizabeth hovered nearby in contrition.

"I'm so sorry, Estrella. I didn't know the sea made you sick," she apologized.

Estrella tried to indicate that no apologies were necessary, but her body retched again.

Worried, Elizabeth asked Will, "Is she going to be all right?"

"I won't die, if that's what you're asking," Estrella managed. "I'll only wish I could."

Elizabeth, who had never been seasick a day in her life, snuggled up to her maid and rubbed her back. "Aaron will have you on shore in no time," she encouraged.

The _Pig_ made very good speed, as though she had abandoned being piggish for Estrella's sake. Nevertheless, it seemed an unconscionably long time before they were back in the sheltered waters of the harbour, drawing near to a different dock, far from Port Royal.

As the little ship bumped up against the pilings of the dock, Will leapt out and caught the painter Aaron tossed to him. Making her fast, he leaned down to help Estrella out onto the planks. Elizabeth assisted her maid into Will's hands and then scrambled out of the _Pig_ on her own. The two of them helped their shaky chaperone along the dock to the sandy shore.

Estrella leaned heavily on the young blacksmith's arm, feeling a tearful, emotional attachment to land that did not move. She did not pay any attention to where they had docked. All that mattered was that they were no longer at sea.

"Come this way," Will was directing. "There will be a place for you to lie down in a cool shelter."

That idea sounded lovely to Estrella. She was supposed to be playing propriety for these two children, but surely they could not get into too much trouble if she lay down for a few moments—just until her head stopped aching. Will Turner was such a responsible young man.

TBC


	10. Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 6b

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 3: Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 6b

By Honorat

Rating: K+

Disclaimer: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer PotC, pick up the characters in Port Royal, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out!

Summary: Will and Elizabeth have a teen-aged moment and one perfect day. Estrella gets a few prematurely gray hairs. Angst again. We will rejoin our regularly scheduled movie for the epic fight between Jack and Will after the next installment. More movie novelization and missing scenes. Still entirely off the edge of the map.

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 6b

The collection of hovels and shelters huddled at the edge of the beach bore all the evidence of being the backdrop for a momentous occasion. The scene was one of colourful pageantry, rich with dark-skinned people in bright ragged clothing, set against the vivid green of the jungle and the white sand of the beach. Children darted about, swift as birds. The air rang with excited calls and happy babble. Several fires were burning under large kettles from which tantalizing odours drifted.

Will guided Estrella to a large, thatched-roof hut with woven walls. It seemed to be in a better state of preservation than many of the other structures. A tiny, wizened old woman met them at the door, her shrunken lips pulled back in a toothless smile.

"Good afternoon, Mother," Will greeted her politely. This woman, unusual in her survival to such an age, held a great deal of status among her people. "Have you a place where this lady can rest and recover from the sea sickness and her headache?"

Nodding rapidly, the woman backed into the shadowy interior. Gesturing to a pile of palmetto mats, she indicated that Estrella should lie down. "I get you a remedy for the sickness."

A bit dubiously, Estrella allowed herself to be persuaded. It was cooler in the dark of the hut, and lying down would feel so good. She sat down.

The little woman disappeared for a moment and then reappeared with a clay mug filled with an unrecognizable liquid. She held the mug determinedly in front of Estrella's face. "Drink this," she commanded.

Even more uncertainly, Estrella gripped the mug and took a small sip. The beverage was not as unpleasant as she had expected. In fact she detected not an insignificant amount of sweetly burning rum as one of the ingredients.

"Now go away," the old woman ordered Will and Elizabeth. "She sleep well."

"Run along then, Elizabeth," Estrella agreed drowsily, already feeling better. "When I've rested, we can go home."

Will and Elizabeth obeyed. Outside in the bright sunlight, Elizabeth whispered to Will, "Did we just drug our chaperone?"

"I don't know," Will shrugged. "Maybe. But it won't hurt her. She'll feel much better after a good nap. No one here will mind that we are unaccompanied."

"Who are these people?" Elizabeth asked staring around her.

"Friends of mine," Will said. "They're slaves from one of the big plantations."

He supposed he'd been greatly daring to bring her here—the governor's daughter at a slaves' celebration. Will marveled at his own temerity. He knew what her father would say to it. It felt disloyal to be glad Estrella had been too shaken to notice it. But Elizabeth would love it, he knew. The fact that she shouldn't be at such a gathering would only add spice to her enjoyment.

"Is it a party?" Elizabeth asked, taking in the preparations and the festive atmosphere.

"Yes, I suppose," said Will. "Their master allows them one day, perhaps once or twice a year."

"That's nice," Elizabeth approved.

Will shook his head. "I don't think he does it to be nice. It diffuses some of the resentment. Keeps it from blowing up. Imagine how you'd feel if you could never do anything you wanted to do. Ever."

"Oh." Elizabeth looked subdued.

He hadn't meant for this to be such a sobering outing. "They do have a lot of fun, though," he said. "I've gotten to know quite a few of these people through some of the plantation work we do at the smithy, and they invited me. You've never seen anything like this. Come on. I'll introduce you."

Leading her into the crowd, Will greeted his particular friends, shaking hands and clapping backs. "This is my friend, Elizabeth," he explained simply. Elizabeth's thoroughbred English ancestry had better remain unmentioned. In her plain, smudged gown, with her hair tangled and her nose pink from the sun, she did not look like the daughter of the governor of Jamaica. For once, he was relieved that Elizabeth only noticed her name when he refused to call her by it. This was not the place to insist on "Miss Swann."

Wide-eyed with curiosity, Elizabeth grinned back at the welcoming smiles she received from these strangers. She knew her father owned plantations, but she had spent very little time on them, and had never been allowed to associate with the field hands. Now she watched as a large woman enfolded Will in a massive hug.

"Li'l blacksmith better have a big appetite," the woman boomed, as Will looked suffocated.

Elizabeth giggled. The woman turned her attention on the girl.

"Come, missy. You meet my girls," she beckoned. Then turning, she bellowed, "Betsy! Maria!"

Two girls separated themselves from a crowd of women around the cauldron over the fire. Considering their mother's girth, they were astonishingly slender. "Yes, Ma?" the taller one answered.

"This be 'Lizbeth," their mother informed them. "She's Will's friend. You see she has a good time."

The three girls stared shyly at each other for a moment.

However, Elizabeth, who had presided at her father's table for several years now, was completely equal to an awkward social situation. Holding out her hands, she smiled. "What is it that smells so good?" she asked. "Can you show me what you're cooking?"

Returning her smile, they nodded for her to follow and the three of them scampered off together.

Will watched her go with a smile of his own. This was what he admired about Elizabeth. Not that she consciously condescended to associate with the lower classes, but that she seemed truly oblivious to social barriers. He'd seen her retreat to high society airs, come the grand lady with intent, but only as a weapon—not because she believed it her right, but because she could use it and had need of it. Here among these people who were considered little better than animals by many, and who were often treated worse, Elizabeth seemed unaware of the vast gulf that lay between them.

Her golden brown head bent in unison with two dark glossy ones as they pondered the seasoning in a communal kettle, as if she'd never been served a many course meal under silver covers. Dark and light hands reached for the ladle, and identical laughter rang out as the three girls licked dollops of stew from their fingers.

"It's perfect!" Elizabeth pronounced. "I've never tasted anything more delicious!"

Then Will was drawn away into a crowd of revelers. The next time he caught sight of Elizabeth, she was dancing in a circle with her new friends and a horde of younger children, her pale arms linked with their glowing brown ones. Somewhere, like him, she'd managed to shed her shoes and stockings. Sand was meant for bare feet. Strings of shells adorned her arms and ankles and throat. If there was a young lady inside there, it wasn't showing on the outside. Over the other noise and chatter he could hear snatches of singing.

"We're devils and black sheep and really baaaaaad eggs," Elizabeth caroled at the top of her lungs.

And everyone joined in: "Drink up me hearties. Yo ho!"

Will shook his head in rueful amusement. Elizabeth and her pirate song. The governor shouldn't worry about low company corrupting his daughter. He should worry about her influence on them.

As the sun began to draw its flame-coloured veils across the sky, Will and Elizabeth rejoined each other with the crowds around the cauldrons of seasoned meat. Their morning of activity in the fresh sea air had left them ravenous. Free of all inhibitions, Elizabeth reveled in eating with her fingers and making a mess. Will had to laugh at her. Since her handkerchief had either been forgotten or lost, she couldn't remember which, he had to loan her his to clean up.

He began to feel some fellow feeling with her father when he had to rescue Elizabeth from being plied with rum.

"You don't want to be drinking that!" Will whisked the bottle out of her hands. That was the problem with locking girls up until they could be married off. They hadn't the slightest idea how to go on. He steered Elizabeth towards where an agile urchin had liberated some coconuts and was slashing the tops off them for folks to drink.

"But I hate coconut milk," Elizabeth protested.

"It's that or nothing," Will informed her. "I don't think I want to know what you'd be capable of drunk!"

Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at him. She took a sip of the coconut to slake her thirst, screwing her face up with distaste. "The rest is all yours," she said emphatically.

* * *

As the feasting slowed down and the darkness closed in around the circles of firelight, the drums began to throb and a shiver ran through the celebrants. Gradually voices raised in song. It was a song of impossible grief combined with a joy in life that resonated with Will as though these men and women, who'd lost their homes and families and freedom, had read his heart and set his pain to rhythm and music.

The tempo increased, growing wilder. Bodies began to move into cadences and patterns. The pulse of the music set up a counterpoint in Will's blood.

"Come on, Will," Elizabeth tugged at his sleeve, her eyes bright with firelight. She was already swaying with the primitive beat. Recklessly, he allowed her to lead him into the dance.

To move, unfettered, frantic as though he were escaping everything, even his own thoughts, was an almost painful respite. Will was aware only of the music and of Elizabeth. She seemed to become music and incarnate fire, flickering like a pale flame amongst the dark ones, painted with brush strokes of golden light and violet shadow, whirling like sparks caught in wind. Light ran down her arms, gilding her plain gown into something fantastic, worthy of a palace, setting her tossing hair aglow. Her hands brushed his like the burning kiss of molten metal as she spun towards him and then away.

As though keeping an unspoken agreement, Will and Elizabeth drew apart from the crowd of gyrating bodies in the direction of the sea. The music still coursed through them so that their walk together more nearly resembled their dance. Elizabeth's hair swayed in counterpoint to the movements of her body. Her arms and legs seemed caught in the pounding rhythm. Will felt the drumbeats deep in his bones as he was drawn irresistibly by the wild harmonies. Somehow it seemed natural that they should join hands. Their individual movements melded into a single continuous, whirling motion. The silk-smooth touch of Elizabeth's hand in his rough one sent races of lightning along Will's arm.

When the sound of the festivities had dwindled far enough into the distance that the strong susurration of the sea dominated the night sounds, they slowed to a gentle walk. The glistening, tide-washed sand sang back to their bare feet with every step. A trail of two sets of footprints followed them for short distances until the long running curls of foam erased them. Will found he hadn't let go of Elizabeth's hand.

In the background, palm trees whispered in a soothing interlace of fronds. Far away in the jungle, animal cries occasionally punctuated the peace. Around the curve of the bay, the evening lamps of Port Royal lit windows and doorways with gold while the moon dusted the tile and thatched roofs with paler light. The waters of the harbour threw back flickers of flames and the rippling reflection of the moon. For this moment in time, Will was perfectly happy. The only things in the world were he and Elizabeth and the bright canopy of stars held up by the columns of palms, their dark fretwork capitals edged with the silver wash of the moon. A perfect night to crown their perfect day.

Stopping for a moment, the two of them looked out over the sea.

"Do you see the path the moon makes on the water?" Elizabeth asked.

"I always used to wish I could walk across it," Will answered.

"Yes," Elizabeth agreed. "I used to pretend that it was a bridge that led to a wonderful country where all my wishes would come true." She paused for a moment. "Sometimes I imagined that my mother would be there—if I could just find a way across."

"I once thought that was the way my father had gone," Will looked down at the sand.

Elizabeth's hand tightened on his. "Do you still miss him?"

"No. . . . Yes. . . . I don't know," Will had never spoken to anyone about his father. Ever. Suddenly, he wanted to tell Elizabeth.

Awkwardly he tried to piece together his feelings. "I've always missed my father—even when we knew where he was and a letter would come once in awhile, or he'd come home once or twice a year. I loved him so much when he was there—his laugh, the way he could lift me up as though I didn't weigh anything, the way he was so tall no one dared bother my mother or me when he was around, the things he taught me—knots and a little whittling and how to shoot, even how to hit a target with a spitball."

He paused a moment, reflecting with a private grin that Elizabeth was surely the only young lady who, instead of looking disgusted at the idea of a talent for spitting, would look intrigued. Best not even let her get started with that idea.

He hurried on. "My father even took me fishing once." Will hated how pathetic his small list of memories sounded. "But I never really knew him," he admitted.

The warm touch of Elizabeth's hand was a comfort. Will was glad for the darkness, for the shadows that made it feel like he wasn't revealing anything, as though the night would swallow all revelation. "I guess I miss ever having had a father, really," he said finally. "Even if he showed up now, nothing can bring that back."

Looking at Elizabeth, he said, "You're lucky to have a father who cares so much for you."

Elizabeth was silent for a minute; then she admitted, "I know."

They walked on together, each lost in memory.

"How old were you when your mother died?" Will asked finally, wondering how it was they'd never discussed their parents before.

"I was eight," Elizabeth said. "I would have had a little sister, if they had lived. But first the baby died and then my mother."

"I'm sorry," Will murmured, and it was his turn to press Elizabeth's hand comfortingly. "Your mother must have been very beautiful."

"How did you know?" Elizabeth asked, genuinely puzzled.

Will's smile quirked at her unselfconsciousness. "Lucky guess."

"She was all the light and life in our house," Elizabeth went on. "I don't think the sun ever shone again in England after she died. I only remember rain or sleet or snow. I think my father accepted the post of governor here just to get away from that empty house and gray sky."

Elizabeth took a deep breath of the warm air, redolent with frangipani blossoms and the sea. "I'm glad we came here."

"I am too," Will said simply.

In companionable silence, they wandered along the shore. But Elizabeth could never stay quiet and introspective for long.

"Listen," she exclaimed, stopping for a moment.

"What?" Will asked, unsure what she'd heard.

Elizabeth waved her hand to encompass the entire bay. "It's calling to us."

Tossing Will a sparkling look of mischief, she broke into a coltish gallop, dragging him straight into the water. Hand in hand they splashed through the shallow waves that caressed the sand with delicate strokes. Moonlight turned the flying water into sprays of pearls.

They romped along the shore, chasing the hissing foam as it retreated into the sea then turning to race ahead of the next breaker as the wreaths of white froth licked at their heels, giggling and yelping when it caught them. Elizabeth broke away from Will, daring to follow the withdrawing seas too far, shrieking with mock terror as the returning low roar of water caught at her legs, tangling her attempts to flee. Finally, the inevitable happened. Elizabeth turned too late and the moonlit curl of a breaker swept her down, laughing, into its embrace.

She regained her feet before Will could plunge to her rescue, but the sight of her rising from the gem-encrusted clash of waves, halted him as though he were suddenly anchored. Elizabeth seemed a spirit of the sea, shimmering with cascades of salt water, her hair wet and curling like tendrils of seaweed over her shoulders, the strings of tiny cowries glinting at her throat and wrists, her eyes like starlight on water, her body limned with silver. Her delighted laugh rang like the peal of bells. Will's breath caught reverently.

He was irresistibly drawn to her side, joining her in the muted thunder of the breaking water, reaching out his hands to her shoulders, bracing with her against the ceaselessly breathing waves. They stood so close Will could see the water droplets glittering on Elizabeth's eyelashes, could feel her breath against his skin.

The night enfolded them in warm velvet spangled with diamonds.

There are moments in life when everything changes—when the universe flips, reverses itself, turns inside out—and when the soul finally ceases reeling and staggers upright, nothing is ever the same again. That night Will Turner's universe changed.

He had always known that Elizabeth was important to him, that she was his dearest friend, that life without her would be intolerably barren and desolate. But as the warmth of her flesh burned him through the fabric of her gown, as he looked into her exquisite, delicate face, he knew, with a thunderclap of dizzying desire that was more like pain than anything he had ever experienced before in his life, that he loved Elizabeth Swann. Loved her with a passion that terrified him even as it exalted him.

His hand rose without his volition, tracing the fine curve of her cheek, not quite touching. Elizabeth's eyes met his, large and full of night. The expression in them, allure and mystery and promise, sent a shiver through him. No walls stood between them now. Her lips parted. Her head tilted up towards him, all trust and dawning realization. For one breathless moment a newborn kiss hovered in the air between them. Impossible futures swept around them on wings of fire.

And then reality, kept at bay in the dark, latched its teeth into Will's throat. He froze in horror. What in hell did he think he was doing?

He might have managed to fool himself into believing that nothing separated them for this one day, but the truth blazed cold and harsh, chasing away the shadows of all dreams. Elizabeth was the governor's daughter. He, Will Turner, was merely the orphaned son of a merchant seaman, a blacksmith's apprentice. There could never be anything like love between them.

He would be a cad of the most despicable sort to compromise this innocent girl now, to awaken her to something so utterly doomed, to deliver her up to her luminous future anything less than heart-whole for the man she would one day love and marry.

He had been criminally irresponsible to have allowed their adventure to reach such a point.

Letting both hands fall in fists to his side, Will summoned all the steel in his soul to say lightly to Elizabeth, "We should go back to Estrella now. She may be worried, and I need to get you home before your father ignores my message and rouses the entire fort to hunt us down."

Elizabeth's eyes widened in confusion. She shivered in on herself as he pulled away. Will longed to put his arms around her, to reassure her that everything between them would be all right. But he knew it would not. Almost angrily, he tore himself from her side and set off at a bruising pace for the shore and the firelight.

"Will?" Elizabeth called. Slowly she followed his footprints, placing her own directly on top of his, matching his long stride. An hour earlier she would have run after him, coaxing him into a merrier temper. Now she hung back, reluctant and awkward, unsure of her own feelings. Something indefinable had changed.

The barrier between them had been imaginary before. Suddenly it was real.

* * *

Estrella awoke in startled disorientation. The dark was filled with strange odours and wild, frightening sounds. Where was she? What had happened? She remembered being sick and drinking some potion. What had been in that drink?

Elizabeth! Struggling to her feet, Estrella stumbled about in the dark, knocking into unfamiliar objects. If anything had happened to Elizabeth . . .

Finally, she recognized the flickering light as the doorway. Rushing to its opening, she stared out in shock at the twisting, writhing mass of dark bodies, the fearful crackle of flames. The disturbing throb of drums set her nerves on edge. Frantically she searched the crowd for a golden brown head. Just as she was about to panic, she saw Will Turner making his way towards her; Elizabeth, thank God, was trailing along in his wake. The two of them looked wet and rather shaken, but they were unharmed. Estrella began to breathe again. Forget counting additional gray hairs, she sighed. After today, she'd surely have white hair. What would the governor say when they returned?

* * *

Will moved through the farewells in a fog of half-comprehension. Estrella's shrill, worried relief and scolding. His friends' boisterous good wishes. The realization that rum was becoming a more significant part of the festivities and that soon it would not be safe for Elizabeth to be here. Finding the cart he'd arranged to carry them back to Port Royal. Through it all, he did not go near Elizabeth, although she was the only person of whom he was absolutely aware, as though every move she made, every look, every texture of her, resonated in his own body.

She hugged her new friends, accepted the small gifts of flowers and shells with enthusiasm, collected her discarded shoes and stockings, and finally allowed herself to be bundled reluctantly into the cart, waving until they rounded a curve in the road.

The rest of the journey they completed in silence. Elizabeth curled up on the straw and closed her eyes. But somehow Will knew she was not asleep. With all that jolting, sleep was certainly impossible for him. He stared instead into the dark night with burning eyes.

When the cart finally creaked to a halt in front of the gate to the governor's mansion, Will helped Estrella and then Elizabeth down. Estrella made as if to hurry Elizabeth through the gate, but the girl hung back obstinately.

"I need to say good-bye to Will," she insisted. And when Estrella merely paused beside her, waiting, she added firmly, "Alone."

Estrella looked from Will's drawn face to Elizabeth's resolute one and withdrew without demur to where she could see the two of them but not hear what passed between them.

"You know that I am going away?" Elizabeth asked.

"I know," Will said. "Your father told me."

The shadows of the night hid his expression.

"I shall be returning to work tomorrow," he finally said. "The doctor has said I may, if I don't overexert myself."

"Oh," said Elizabeth. "That will be good for you."

"Yes."

Elizabeth hesitated, then added, "I shall miss seeing you."

"Yes."

Several awkward moments stretched out into silent eternity.

"One season." Elizabeth broke the silence, determination lifting her chin. "I have informed my father that I will not stay on that pestilential plantation for more than one season. If I can learn to pass for a lady and then do my duty by society, perhaps . . . " Her voice trailed off.

They both knew there would be no end of duty for the governor's daughter. That she must always and forever pass for a lady.

"I'm sorry," Will said helplessly.

As though unwilling to trust her voice, Elizabeth nodded and blinked fiercely. She raised her head in her indomitable way, as though this were a battle she must fight until the bitter end.

Dear God, how much he loved her. The strength of that emotion terrified him.

They stood on the hard-packed road, reluctant to part, no longer the two children who had met on that same road that morning. Something precious had ended this day, and it seemed impossibly hard not to linger until something new could be forged.

"I had a lovely time," Elizabeth said softly, shy in his presence as she had never been before.

"I did too," Will said around his constricted throat.

Elizabeth looked up at him, her moonlit eyes uncertain.

How he longed to remove that uncertainty. To let her know what this last day would always mean to him. But honour sealed his lips. Instead he forced the words he had known he must say since he had spoken with her father. "Good-bye, Miss Swann."

The hurt in her eyes as that wall of formality slid back into place impaled him like steel through his chest. He hadn't known how much this moment would cost him. He did not know whether he had the courage to pay its price.

He forced himself to continue. "Thank you so much for your kindness."

Elizabeth flinched as though he had struck her. This time, she did not insist that he call her by name.

"Good-bye, Will," she whispered. And then she fled to where Estrella waited in the darkness.

Will did not return to the smithy. He spent the night high on the promontory overlooking the harbour, watching the silver path of the moon travel across the sea. Finally, it slipped over the horizon, leaving relentless black. Now he could never set foot on it to find his heart's desire, nor anyone that he had lost. Will remained motionless, arms wrapped around his knees, and watched until each star grew faint and quenched its light in the merciless tide of dawn. Slowly, stiffly, he arose and set his face away from the sea, back to Port Royal, to the cold forge and to the empty shop.

TBC


	11. Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part 7

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 3: Canticle for a Blacksmith, Part VII

By Honorat

Rating: K

Disclaimer: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer PotC, pick up the characters in Port Royal, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out!

Summary: More angst alert. Welcome to the ongoing path to destruction. Fasten your seatbelts. Please keep your arms and head inside the vehicle. The end of the story of Will and Master Brown. We will rejoin our regularly scheduled movie for the epic fight between Jack and Will in the next installment. More movie novelization and missing scenes. Still entirely off the edge of the map.

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

Once more, the fire in the forge was re-kindled. The hammer blows rang their anthems again and the smoldering coal breathed its incense. Will ignored the doctor's advice to begin slowly and attacked his work as though in molding steel, he could remake his world. He was aware of the day Elizabeth sailed for St. Kitts, but he made no request for time off to see her departure. Elizabeth looked in vain for him, long after the waving crowd on the docks had shrunk to a blur. 

The burden of reviving the business fell heavily on the young blacksmith's shoulders. Work had not rejuvenated the mastersmith. Will scarcely recognized his master now. Joe would have a terrible home-coming, he reflected. He would find his mother and sisters gone and his father a mere husk of a man. Will found himself counting the days until Joe's return. Then surely Master Brown would come back from whatever far country he had withdrawn to.

But that longed-for day passed and then weeks went by. The _Gabrielle, _on which Joe was to have sailed, was already a month overdue.

Will was straightening the smithy at day's end when the news came. Master Richardson, the sail maker, whose shop was down by the docks, entered the dim shop near closing time. "May I help you?" Will asked politely.

Richardson stood there, twisting his hat in his hands, the muscles around his mouth working strangely. Finally he croaked, "Is your master here, boy?"

"Yes, he's in back. I'll get him." Will turned, but the sail maker stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"No. That's fine. I'll go myself." The man headed to the back of the shop looking stooped and somehow older than Will remembered. Something about the look in his eyes sent a shiver of memory through Will's heart. That was a man who was carrying bad news. Half-heartedly, he continued replacing tools, one ear strained to the back room.

"Joseph."

"What is it Henry?"

Silence.

"Joseph, it's the _Gabrielle_. She was attacked by pirates. I'm sorry, Joseph. Your son . . . Joe Jr. . . . is dead. The pirates killed him. They killed them all."

* * *

Will, who had learnt very young that everything and everyone he loved would be taken from him, merely bowed his shoulders under this new weight of loss and threw himself against his work like a wounded animal against the bars of its cage. The forge became the sanctuary where his soul revived. He experimented with the techniques about which Joe had written, feeling that the only way he could memorialize his friend would be to achieve that goal for which he had gone away—to make the name of Brown famous for its blades. It would never now be Brown and Son. 

One morning, he came down to the shop to discover that Master Brown had preceded him. The fire was already built up, although the smith was gone. When Will walked over to the forge he discovered the flames slowly consuming the new sign, prepared so many months ago for Joe's homecoming. The "& Son" had almost completely burnt away. Will stood dry-eyed with an aching throat and watched until the last of the wood had been reduced to ashes.

* * *

Master Brown had always spent an hour or two of nights at the local tavern with some of his fellow master craftsmen, relaxing over a pint of ale. The occasions had been pleasantly social and had never interfered with his duties. But now, he began staying later and later, leaving Will to lock up the shop for the night. Then the drinking began to follow him home, gradually increasing. Will would find his master in the smithy with a bottle at his elbow, tipping it more and more frequently. The mastersmith began drinking seriously earlier in the evenings and later in the mornings until he was almost never completely sober. 

The alcohol may have numbed the pain, but it was showing in the man's work. Customers who had never had cause for complaint began returning goods with polite and not-so-polite remarks, pointing out flaws and breakages. They objected to having "apprentice work" passed off as the work of a master craftsman. Will always bit his tongue and flushed.

One terrible day, an angry shipwright barged into the smithy demanding to know why he had been sold a gear that had fractured under the stress and had struck one of his apprentices. The lad would be lucky if all he lost was a hand. Master Brown was profuse in his apologies, taking the man into the house where he apparently managed a settlement of some sort. The shipwright left the shop gripping his payment, eyeing Will hostilely. But Will and his master stared at each other in horror and dawning surmise. It had not been "apprentice work" that had shattered.

"Will." The smith looked at him from red-rimmed, pleading eyes. "Please don't let me kill anyone."

Will opened his mouth to protest. Then, innately honest, he closed it again. He gave a short nod. "I'll check the work before it goes out," he said simply. If part of him condemned the smith, part of him wished only to ease the terrible burden on the man.

Master Brown stumbled to the loading dock stairway and slumped down with his head in his hands.

"Flaw in the steel, son," he muttered brokenly, no longer speaking about the ruined gear. "Flaw in the steel. I never, never meant to be this way. It's just . . ." He couldn't continue.

Will laid a hand on the older man's shoulder. "I know."

But the steel in Joseph Brown had not been flawed, Will knew. It had been shining bright and cutting-edge hard. However, his wife had been the iron heart of his steel blade. She'd given him the resilience he'd need to spring back from life's blows. With her death, he'd lost that flexibility, become brittle and bitter. And the loss of his entire family had been a blow that had shattered him utterly.

* * *

After that incident, Will took on all the tasks where an error could be fatal. And he quietly re-did any work his master turned out that was beneath his standards. Customers ceased to complain about "apprentice work." 

He thought the problems were solved. The first hint that anything was still amiss at the smithy was so small he scarcely noticed it—just an unpaid bill. The cooper had not liked to bother the mastersmith on the heels of the tragedy and had approached Will. Will settled the bill with coin from an earlier customer's payment and thought no more about it.

Then one day, he was accosted by an irate iron merchant demanding to know how many more times Joseph Brown expected to have credit extended if he was never going to pay. "You tell him from me, boy, that if the bills aren't cleared by the end of the month, nary a pig of that iron will I be delivering!"

Will hurried home in a turmoil of new worries. He was relieved to find Master Brown was not yet down to the smithy. Going to the cupboard where he knew the ledgers were kept, he unlatched the hasp and opened the door. A rain of crumpled paper tumbled onto the workbench in front of him. Smoothing one of the wrinkled leaves, Will rapidly scanned the text. Apparently their supplier of coal was reluctantly forced to take legal action to retrieve his due payment.

The words were polite but the meaning was clear. A dunning notice. Rapidly, Will shuffled through the shocking pile of paper. These were all duns! Some of them considerably less than polite. All of them making it very obvious why Will had been noticing shortages in the smithy's supplies.

With a sinking heart, Will pulled down the leather-bound ledgers. Dust rose in an ominous puff. He flipped through the most recent accounts, no longer surprised that, from the date of Mistress Brown's death, the entries grew more and more haphazard, and after news had reached them of Joe's murder, there were no more entries.

The afternoon passed without the mastersmith ever appearing. The long evening light faded to dark, and the night candles burnt on into morning as Will struggled to make sense of the mess in the bookkeeping. He sorted all the work orders he could find. He listed all the jobs he could remember doing and all those the mastersmith had done. He added up the bills. When he totaled the figures, he was relieved to see that even if he'd missed some entries, there should be enough to cover the smithy's debts, although he greatly feared there would be household debts for which he hadn't accounted.

He would have to corner Master Brown when he finally came to work and shake him upside down until the coins fell out! Will vowed he would tie the man down until he was stone cold sober and force him to cough up the payments.

He was so tired.

Will ran his fingers through his mop of hair and stretched his cramping shoulder blades. An entire day of beating steel couldn't make him this stiff. He'd just catch a little sleep before the day started again. Then he noticed the dark between the slats of the smithy walls was actually a lighter shade. Dragging himself to the door of the shop, he looked out on the pre-dawn gray sky. It was already morning. He'd have to begin his chores immediately, and he'd have no time to practice with his sword. Work must be completed if the smithy was to survive. Resigning himself to the inevitable, Will brought up the fire and fed the donkey.

That afternoon, when the smith at last staggered down the stairs into the shop, Will confronted him with the execrable state of the smithy's accounts. When pressed, the man admitted he'd been paying little attention to either the money he owed or the money owed him. He also confessed he didn't know how much money was left. Unspoken between them was the knowledge that rum and ale were not free.

Will, at age eighteen, held out his hand to his mentor, the closest thing to a father he'd ever had. "The key," he said, low and firm.

Slowly, Master Brown drew the chain off his neck and handed his apprentice the small key to the chest where the smithy's income was stored.

In that moment their roles finally reversed. There were still two and a half years left of Will's apprenticeship, but the two of them knew who was now the mastersmith.

* * *

The financial situation had been even worse than Will had feared. The medical expenses of the last year had eaten all of the reserves. The time lost from work had sent them into debt. The fact that Will was the only full-time blacksmith now working was preventing them from regaining ground. And Master Brown had been drinking up any profit that came in. The rest of the smithy's income appeared to be still owed by customers taking advantage. They would have to retrench with a vengeance. 

Will's life began to resemble a nightmare of the kind where he ran and ran and never seemed to move. Master Brown descended further each day into drunkenness while Will gritted his teeth and set about hauling the business back from the brink of destruction by main force and backbreaking work.

For the sake of the past, for the family he had been given, for the gift of the skill that now lived in his hands, Will bore with patience the burden Master Brown had become. He arose early and worked late to keep up the necessary output of the shop. Days stretched into months. Will could no longer remember the last time he'd taken his half-day off. Since he was prevented from seeing Elizabeth—Miss Swann—there was really no reason for a holiday.

When Elizabeth returned from St. Kitts, she immediately became the toast of Port Royal. Will only caught sight of her once in a long while, like a glimpse of fresh water in a desert. She was every inch a fine lady now, elaborately gowned and coiffed, surrounded by billows of young ladies of her own class. The hordes of fine gentlemen paying court to her had none of them worked a day in their lives with their velvet, white-skinned hands. Will shut his eyes and his heart with a clash of bolts and chains.

His only relief from unremitting labour was his daily three hours of practice with the sword. During this respite, he fought with all the pent up fury of his thwarted life until there was no one at the fort who could match him. Even Captain Norrington had been intrigued enough to try a few rounds with the blacksmith's apprentice. Will had bested him two times out of three. The victories mattered nothing to Will—only the fighting itself was a relief, whether he won or lost. In the violent action, in the clash and scrape of steel, he could forget.

He kept the smithy's books in the dusty ledger in his careful cramped hand. In the last year of his mother's life, he'd had to take over much of the household accounts, but he'd never had to deal with unpaid debt before. He forced himself through the agony of confronting the customers whom Master Brown had let punt on tick for far too long. He visited the irate creditors, arranging repayment schedules, his sensitive soul raw with the shame.

He grew resigned to awkward questions and adept at fielding them. Carefully, he guarded his master's debilitation from his neighbours and associates. He told them that since the business would in all likelihood pass to him now, Master Brown was involving him more in its administrative elements. The lies never got easier, but he managed. In uncharacteristic charity, the townspeople accepted the fiction with nothing more than sympathetic glances at the driven young man. Joseph Brown had been well liked. It had been such a tragedy—almost made one think of Job. Will was a fine lad.

The personal care the mastersmith now required was no less arduous. Until the accounts balanced, Will could not justify hiring any help. So in addition to his duties as blacksmith, he tried to keep up the household. Never had he appreciated the sheer hard labour involved in the most simple of meal preparations and cleanup, in the laundry and mending of ill-used blacksmith's clothing, in fighting back the chaos of dirt that seemed determined to coat every surface in a smith's house. Mostly, he lost the battle, but he struggled on grimly, aware that to give up would be fatal.

The alcohol itself assumed an almost personified demonization in Will's mind. This creature had kidnapped his mentor and friend and replaced him with this changeling child, dependent on Will for nearly everything. He had to help the man to his bed when he would stumble into the smithy in the early hours of the morning, waking his exhausted apprentice. Sometimes Master Brown would not come home, and Will, who needed to be working, would have to comb the alleys around the taverns in the chill, gray light of morning for the unconscious smith. When he found him lying in some filthy corner, Will would cart the man home, clean off the effluvia, the vomit, the bodily waste, as though his master had been an infant, and put him to bed. Then would come laundering, which Will tried to accomplish in brief moments between tasks in the shop. Some days it seemed more than he could bear.

The months stretched into years. Years in which the smithy regained some of its former prosperity. Years of loneliness as Will spent almost every waking hour in the dark, fiery heart of the forge. Years in which he drove himself in desperation to master his art with surpassing skill and speed. Years in which he watched all the credit for that skill given to his master. The blades of J. Brown were indeed becoming well-known, as Joe had dreamed.

For the sake of what he owed Mastersmith Brown, for the love and the home that had been given him, for what the man had once been, Will endured his master's drunken, childlike dependence. He cared for the shattered man with the tenderness of a son. Some days were better than others. Sometimes Master Brown would come down to the shop, red-eyed and haggard, but almost sober, and they would work together in silence as they had in the past. But such occasions were vanishingly rare now. And the laughter was gone.

* * *

Reaching the square on which the smithy was located, Will paused by the solid double doors, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and laid his hand on the latch. He would deal with whatever awaited him behind that door. Then he would go to the fire and let its heat on his face burn off whatever dross of resentment might remain in his soul that the wind had not blown away. The steel and iron in his hands would absorb the energy of his banked emotions. The song of the hammer on the anvil would drown out the fretful noise of the world. The rhythm of creation, the music of the forge would empty him and fill him. 

As he forged the steel, so the steel would forge him, folding his grief into his courage, giving him that hardened edge of strength combined with the gentle resilience that would allow him to bow almost to the very dust without breaking.

TBC


	12. Drawn Steel

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 4: Drawn Steel

By Honorat

Rating: K

Disclaimer: Then acquit me, Disney. You have your profit; I'm of no further value to you.

Summary: Jack meet Will. Will meet Jack. Quick! Separate them before somebody gets killed! More of the epic of the blacksmith and the pirate. More movie novelization and missing scenes. We have rejoined our regularly scheduled program.

Thank you, Geek Mama, for the wonderful beta work; I'll buy you a hat—a really big one.

* * *

**Drawn Steel**

The creaking rumble of the great gears seized Will's attention the minute he raised the latch of the smithy door. For one instant, hope stirred like the brush of dove's wings against his heart. Perhaps Master Brown had roused from his stupor and today they could work together again. Carefully, Will closed the door, set the latch back in place and turned to peer into the shop. The lift in his spirits lasted only until his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

The shop appeared empty. The only motion came from the donkey, frantically charging around its stone circle. With quick steps, Will descended to the loading dock, crouched with one hand to the ledge, and leapt to the dirt floor. Holding out an arm to the donkey, Will moved to its side and managed to halt the frightened animal. Soothingly, he ran one hand along its coarse mane, bringing the other up to stroke its quivering muzzle. The poor little creature was terrified. Concerned, Will wrapped a comforting arm around its shaggy neck, continuing to rub his hand up and down its nose. The donkey made a plaintive rusty gate sound. Whatever could be wrong with it?

He raised his head and scanned the shop, a little worry nipping at the edges of his mind. Had something happened to Master Brown? Now that the gears had stopped, the forge grew as silent as it had been when he'd left with the commodore's sword. He could feel the donkey heaving a sigh of relief in his arms. Judging that the animal was sufficiently calm, Will straightened and stepped up from the stone circle. In the shadows he could make out the slumbering figure of the mastersmith. Now that he was listening for them, he could hear the man's inebriated snores.

The heat of the forge in the afternoon was stifling, so he set about shedding his tight coat and prying a few buttons open on his weskit as he strode over to where Master Brown's short, drunken bulk sprawled against the rotary grinder. The irony that the highlight of his day was discovering that this man had not moved did not escape him. His smile twisted wryly at himself for having hoped this time might be different.

"Right where I left you," he said softly, the breath of his laugh catching in the unaccountable tightness of his throat.

Will turned away from his master, mentally berating himself for wasting time, when he stiffened, a frown wrinkling his eyebrows together. Even though Master Brown seemed as well as could be expected, the feeling of wrongness in the smithy intensified. Something had changed. Automatically, Will threw his coat on the hook where he always did, but he didn't stop looking uneasily about the forge. His gaze sharpened as it caught on the anvil. Across its surface lay a medium-sized wedge peen hammer.

"Not where I left _you_," Will murmured, tilting his head quizzically.

Had the mastersmith been up while Will had been out? Surely he could not have done so and replaced himself so exactly. Nor had Master Brown ever left his tools lying around, even when thoroughly foxed. It was one habit that seemed to come as instinctively as breathing to the man. Naturally tidy himself, Will had picked up that habit as well. Will's eyebrows drew further together in puzzlement. What was the meaning of this mystery? And what had it to do with the donkey's state of agitation?

As he raised his eyes, still seeking the source of his apprehension, an anomaly snagged his attention. On the workbench beside the forge, a battered tri-corn covered the small anvil—a hat that did not belong to anyone Will knew. Its dull leather was scuffed and a deep groove ran through the top of its crown. Will felt chill fingers creep along his spine. Some stranger had been in the smithy. Someone had been using the blacksmith's tools for some unknown purpose. Who could it have been? And why? Searching for some clue as to the identity of the owner of the hat, Will reached cautiously for its brim.

Just as his fingertips brushed the leather, a steel blade struck the back of his hand with a stinging smack.

* * *

Deep in the shadows behind the forge, Jack Sparrow watched silently and warily as a young man entered the smithy through the same door the pirate had used earlier. Just how badly Jack's escape plans were now scuppered remained to be determined. At least the new arrival was not wearing a scarlet coat. He was dressed painfully neatly and plainly in colours that blended completely into the dust and wood of the shop. His dark hair was pulled back severely in a tight queue. Just an ordinary citizen, then, barely more than a boy, really, in spite of his height. If he were a customer, he would likely leave. That would be the ideal scenario—which didn't give Jack much hope of it, considering the way his day had been going.

Sure enough, the young man scanned the shop as though he already knew something had gone wrong. Then he vaulted to the floor and moved swiftly to still the donkey. There was a tight athleticism in his actions that did not bode well. Unless Jack missed his guess, this boy, not that drunken sot, was responsible for the order in this smithy. If he were that sorry little man's son, Jack would be willing to bet his mother had been playing fast and loose with her chaste treasure. One thing was certain—an extraneous pirate in the shop was not going to remain unnoticed by those sharp eyes for long. Jack tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. He might have to be persuading this youth rather forcefully that the better part of valour would be to let said pirate depart in peace.

As the boy soothed that darned mule back into its former immobile state, Jack rapidly ran through his options. Slipping inconspicuously away was out of the question. He would have to step out of hiding in order to reach any of the doors. While he might dash for the door that led to the main street, he could still hear the shouts of marines from that direction. He tensed as the young man came towards him. He hadn't been spotted yet, but it was only a matter of time. The kid was already suspicious and alert, checking first on the snoring sleeper, then scrutinizing the shop.

Then the boy caught sight of the hammer. Jack had a moment to curse overly-conscientious, nit-pickingly tidy, gimlet-eyed blacksmiths before those quick eyes leapt to the telltale hat, perched on the workbench. _Damn!_ Jack cursed the unknown woman who had chosen an inconveniently sharp-witted sire for this whelp. Why couldn't he run afoul of some lumpish lout who'd scarcely notice the appearance of a fully rigged ship, let alone a small, non-descript leather object that just happened to be the precious possession of a pirate who very much did not want to be introduced? A pirate who would be extremely happy to take that hat that was causing the young man such disturbance and disappear forever. Was that too much to ask of Fate?

Apparently so. The kid reached out to pick up Jack's hat.

Discovery was only moments away. Jack Sparrow preferred to choose his moments. With a swift flick of his wrist he brought the flat of his blade down sharply on those knuckles.

* * *

Will jerked his hand back and stared wildly into the shadows as a figure from his nightmares emerged into a shaft of sunlight. The darkened steel blade of a well-used cutlass advanced in steady threat against his chest. Fear and rage seized the blacksmith's apprentice as he gave ground, stepping carefully backwards. This was no respectable man, no waiting customer. No decent citizen would wear such barbaric gaudery tied into such a savage tangle of braids and knotted strands of hair. No upright and honourable person would tie that mess of hair in such a wild red scarf, nor line his eyes so appallingly with some black substance. And no sane man would wear his beard in such ridiculous, stringy, beaded braids. The despicable creature was dirty and probably diseased. The broken manacles on those grimy wrists, the still-damp appearance of his shabby clothing told the rest of the story. Will felt a wave of complete revulsion.

This was not even an ordinary criminal. This villain was a member of that cursed breed of human refuse who preyed without mercy or conscience on the helpless—one of those demon spawn whose slaughters and cruelties reverberated the length and breadth of the Spanish Main. He had seen beasts like this one slowly, and with evident relish, torture and kill men, women and children. He had lost a friend who had been like a brother to the depredations of such animals. And this brute had dared to lay his filthy hands on Elizabeth!

Fighting back the nausea of memory, Will resisted the temptation to throw himself at the intruder and strangle him with his bare hands. He could not let his anger make him stupid. He was unarmed, and the wretch holding that cutlass, even if his bent elbow and relaxed stance announced that he had no intention of striking immediately, would have no compunction about running him through if he felt threatened. Although every nerve in his body revolted, Will continued to fall back before the swordsman's advance.

"You're the one they're hunting," Will said. "The pirate." The loathing vibrated in his voice like waves of heat shimmering off stone.

* * *

As Jack herded the young blacksmith into the light on the end of his blade, old memory stirred uneasily, like the faint quiver in the leach of a sail before a shift in the wind. There was something about the kid's face . . . The heavy, straight brows? The dark, glowering eyes? Something in the set of the jaw, or the arrogant angle of the head? Jack couldn't quite grasp what it was, but he could almost believe he'd done this sometime, somewhere in the past.

Tilting his head inquiringly, a puzzled frown on his face, Jack asked, "You seem somewhat familiar. Have I threatened you before?"

Nothing about that stern young face moved except for the lips. "I make a point of avoiding familiarity with pirates," the boy said. The words were quiet, almost monotone, but they smoldered at the surface of such a profound inferno of hatred that Jack had to resist the urge to back away from the poison of it.

"Ah," he breathed in comprehension, bringing his chin up haughtily. "Well, then it would be a shame to put a black mark on your record," he agreed inclining his head in the slightest of bows. Allowing his sword to fall away from the boy's chest, he stepped back towards the workbench. "So, if you'll excuse me…" Jack turned to retrieve his hat. Now would be a very good time to get the hell out of this infernal pit.

* * *

The instant the pirate's eyes were off him, Will whirled and grabbed for the first blade that came to his hand from the rack around the central shaft of the gears where they were stored. The sword sang free with a metallic slice that Will recognized instantly. He brought up the blade in a classic point-in-line opening move of aggression, intensely satisfied. There was something completely right about the fact that he should have chosen this blade—the blade Joe had crafted for Gordon so many years ago. The small sword did not have the reach with which Will was capable of fighting now, but it was still greater than that of the cutlass belonging to the pirate. It would do very well.

Somehow, it was fitting that the sword Gordon had never been able to use against pirates should finally have a chance to fulfill its purpose. It was appropriate that this magnificent weapon that Joe had crafted should shed the blood of a pirate the likes of which had taken his life. It was part of a perfect pattern that he, Will Turner, who had been the only survivor of a brutal pirate attack, should wield this blade to eliminate one of those filthy bastards from the face of the earth.

Arm straight and steady, Will held the point of his sword at the pirate.

To his surprise, the man did not react with fear or even with anger. Instead, he faced Will, arms loose at his sides, cutlass only half raised, and stepped into range of the hostile blade. Its point was nearly at his throat. The expression on the man's face was one of amused condescension.

"Do you think this wise, boy—crossing blades with a pirate?" The low, rough voice held a grace note of laughter, as though the man were humouring a child, not facing his executioner. But there was also an undercurrent of warning, of danger, that Will had never faced before in any opponent.

Nevertheless, the pirate's reactions were immaterial. A good swordsman did not allow emotion to spoil his concentration on his goal. He certainly did not allow his opponent to goad him into losing his temper. Bringing his arm up a notch, Will replied, his own voice quiet with menace and accusation, "You threatened Miss Swann."

_

* * *

Bloody hell! Jack had managed to tangle affairs with a knight in shining armour, bound to avenge a slight to a lady's honour. God, he hated chivalry. What kind of villainy did that blasted boy imagine he'd been up to? Virgil was right: there was no evil thing more swift than Rumour. No doubt that story had lost nothing in the telling. He wished he'd had a chance to be guilty of half the things that kid must think he'd done. It didn't look like he was going to be able to talk his way out of this one. That steel blade the whelp was brandishing in his face had more flex in it than the boy's spine. And he'd seen obsidian with more softness in it than the matt black of that young man's eyes. He was going to have to fight his way out of this smithy. Jack hated situations that deteriorated to this point._

At least a blacksmith wasn't likely to be a foe worthy of a pirate's steel. He'd just disarm the unmannerly whelp and be on his way. Bringing up his cutlass until it rang against the boy's sword, Jack slid his blade in a clever twist along the edge of the opposing blade, foible to forte and back again. The silken glissade of steel on steel whispered mockingly.

So, this stick of a kid thought the big, bad pirate had done dastardly deeds and terrified little Miss Swann. Much he knew of that young lady! Though perhaps Jack had frightened her a bit at the end there. And so the pirate smiled sardonically and responded to the charge in a husky voice, "Only a little."

Then Captain Jack Sparrow attacked.

TBC


	13. A Clash of Swords

Fic: Worthy of His Steel, Ch. 5: A Clash of Swords

Author: Honorat

Rating: K

Disclaimer: Puts a chill in the bones how many honest writers have been claimed by this franchise.

Summary: Jack meet Will. Will meet Jack. Quick! Separate them before somebody gets killed! More of the epic of the blacksmith and the pirate. More movie novelization and missing scenes. We have rejoined our regularly scheduled program.

Thank you, Geekmama, for the wonderful beta work.

* * *

**A Clash of Swords**

Will Turner had never faced across drawn steel a man whose life he intended to take. Nor had he ever fought an opponent who was trying to kill him. Sheer rage had propelled him into this duel, careless of the consequences, heedless of the pirate's warning. But Will had never let his emotions control his swordsmanship for long.

As the shock of the pirate's first attack shuddered along his blade, the young blacksmith wrenched his mind away from long-held custom. This would be no contest with the best two out of three trials.

The man who won the first bout in this match would live. The man who lost would die. It was as simple as that.

He could make no mistake because a mistake would be fatal.

With the prudence characteristic of his fighting, Will did not leap immediately to the counter attack. Instead he moved from one ward to another, retiring a little at each thrust, all his fear-heightened senses trained on the pirate. Just as he had always done since his first fight with Gordon, he sought to insinuate himself into the mind of the man he must defeat.

His world narrowed to the telltale flicker of an eye, the minute giveaway tensing of a single muscle, the slightest shift of weight or breath of air that preceded a motion.

Will was not impatient. He could wait for his enemy to serve himself to him. In due time, when he had absorbed all he could learn of his opponent's style and skill, he would close measure and take the attack to the pirate.

As he allowed the man to drive him back, Will felt a grim satisfaction. Let the pirate think he had an inexperienced boy on the retreat. He would learn his mistake soon enough.

The musical strike of swords sang throughout the smithy as Will gave way with sure steps, parrying each of the pirate's blows precisely and carefully. When he was sure of his ground, Will brought the fast action to a dead halt. For an instant, the two men stood motionless, blades straining, neither daring to move a muscle, watching each other and waiting for an opening like two poisonous snakes poised for attack.

Then a predatory smile touched the corners of the blacksmith's mouth. For the first time, he, William Turner, would face a pirate, not as a mewling, cowering child, but as a man with the skill and the fortitude and the strength to exact retribution. The sense that each blow must be harder and faster than ever before, that he must not pull back at a touch or first blood, that he would instead follow through, driving his blade to its mortal conclusion, filled him like the roaring of a hurricane.

With contemptuous ease, Will Turner struck back. And now it was the pirate who was forced to retreat.

* * *

Jack was no stranger to seeing his own death in the eyes of an opponent. Over the years he seemed to have provoked a number of individuals and organizations into attempting to put a final period to the legend of Captain Jack Sparrow. However, he had rarely faced an antagonist this ravenous to kill—as though the blacksmith were dying of a thirst only a pirate's blood could quench.

Jack, on the other hand, had no desire to see this foolish, heroic boy's blood mix with the dust of this shop floor. Once, when he had been nearer the lad's age, he might have matched him, fury for fury, until one of them lay dying at the other's feet. But such useless waste of life had long since disgusted him. Now Jack Sparrow was all too aware of the price that could be paid and of who could be asked to pay it. He had already refused to allow the governor's daughter to purchase his freedom with her life. He would not ask her hotheaded champion to pay that final coin if he could find any other way out of this pickle.

However, Jack's hope that the boy would lose his nerve under that first attack seemed doomed to disappointment. Unfortunately, the blacksmith's voracious hunger to slaughter a pirate was accompanied by a frightening level of skill, totally unexpected in a respectable tradesman.

It was just his luck to happen upon the only smith in the Caribbean who really knew how to fight, he thought grimly, watching his longed-for escape fade as he beat a hasty retreat.

The lad made no useless or complicated feints. All of his motions were economical—never three moves when one would do. He pushed his feints into real threats against which Jack had no choice but to respond, leaving the pirate scrambling to recover from his parry to meet the second intention attack. And even if the young blacksmith had given him time to counter-attack, it would have done Jack no good because the boy never let his guard slip or uncovered himself.

It had been . . . a very long time . . . since Jack had faced blade work of this caliber.

As the clash of steel on steel shivered up his sword arm, the unsettling feeling of familiarity intensified. He had done this before. And not, he felt puzzled, with an enemy. However, the only warmth in this lad's eyes was burning, blistering rage.

Up until now, Jack had been toying with his opponent, trying out his paces, hoping to probe a weakness that he could exploit, or trigger some prudence in this young fire-eater, that would lead the lad to step aside and save them both from doing something regrettable. That tactic was manifestly a failure.

As the pirate continued backing further into the shop in his effort to avoid the murderous point of that expertly wielded sword, he considered his next move. Clearly his plan to disarm the whelp was going to have to be revised. Jack knew very well when he was outclassed. However, his youthful opponent had one Achilles heel, as it were—one slight vulnerability that Jack could perhaps exploit and thus save his own valuable hide. Whatever his plebian origins, this blacksmith fought like a gentleman, courteous and highly refined. It had been more years than Jack cared to remember since he had been forced to duel according to polite custom, but he knew the style when he had to cross it. This boy's noble, if misguided, adherence to honour was Jack's only chance to extricate his posterior from the mess in which he now found himself.

Jack tended to place more reliance on his agility and cunning than on settled principles. His swordplay veered towards the wildly impulsive and imaginative. But he trusted he had mastered _l'art de donner et de ne pas recevoir_ sufficiently to evade his self-proclaimed executioner.

In the end, every fight was won or lost first in the mind. Skill mattered, but craft mattered more.

* * *

As he had been taught, Will drove his enemy before him, giving the pirate no opportunity to surprise him with an attack in time. Sparrow's parries, when he managed to find them, could not be followed with ripostes because he was still moving backwards. The safest opponent, Will thought with satisfaction, was a retreating opponent.

He had nearly pinned the pirate against the forge when, unexpectedly, the man beat aside Will's blade and disengaged.

And stopped.

Even though a fighter _never_ disengaged and stopped, but always disengaged as a parry and then a strike.

Will frowned, puzzled, and studied the pirate, waiting for him to raise his weapon in signal that he was prepared to resume fighting, but Sparrow seemed to have decided it was time for conversation. Once again, he appeared oblivious to the threat of Will's sword aimed at his chest as he sauntered forward, cutlass insouciantly at his side.

"You know what you're doing. I'll give you that," the pirate conceded, as though he were commending a student. "Excellent form." He punctuated the compliment with two ringing taps of his blade on Will's sword. Then his eyes narrowed in doubt. "But how's your footwork? If I step here . . ." Sparrow sidestepped to the right and opened the attack in prime, high and inside.

The words, so like those of a master swordsman at practice, lulled Will into the familiar pattern. Instinctively he assumed a similar posture and met the attack with a parry that transformed immediately into a counter-attack. The memory of these motions lived in his muscles; the rhythm of these strokes drummed in his pulse.

Pass, sidestep, volte, traverse. Leading with the body, foot landing simultaneously with a strong, balanced block, beat, attack, counter-attack. Maintaining the ideal distance without allowing his opponent in too close.

Dust rose in puffs of air from hushed footfalls as measured and precise as any cotillion, but far swifter, set to the perilous, elegant music of steel clashing on steel.

For a moment the two of them froze, swords binding forte to forte.

"Very good," Sparrow said approvingly. They might have been drilling in the _salle d'armes_ rather than maneuvering to kill one another. Counteracting the binding with a circular parry, the pirate reversed direction. "And now I step again."

Again they resumed the deadly, intimate dance of swords, circling in lethal minuet amidst the glittering passage of blows.

With a final lunge, Sparrow drove Will back against the forge, but rather than press his advantage, the pirate dropped his arm, tilted his head, and with a strange smile, said, "Ta."

Then he sheathed his cutlass, turned, and walked away.

Stunned, Will realized the pirate had maneuvered himself in between his opponent and the door. This had not been a test of swordsmanship, but of strategy. And he, Will Turner, had failed the test.

However, he had not yet lost the match. The apprentice smith weighed the sword in his hand, balancing.

* * *

One good thing about a fight with an honourable man, Jack decided, was that you could turn your back on him and walk away without expecting a sword between your shoulder blades. For all that this boy wanted a pirate's blood so badly he was salivating for it, Jack knew he wouldn't be breaking the rules to get it. Not particularly logical, but he wasn't complaining.

Sauntering over to the loading dock, Jack vaulted lightly onto it and stepped eagerly up to the door. Relief that he'd be getting away at such small cost gave his step buoyancy. He was in one piece, and he'd been able to leave the kid in one piece, too. He could feel the young blacksmith's eyes drilling holes in his back, but he didn't turn around.

The silken slice of air hissing by his ear was Jack's only warning that his bright plan was scuppered. Then the solid thunk of steel impaling timber shook the entire door.

Where once there had been merely a wooden bar, the lifting of which would free one eager-to-depart pirate from this pestilential smithy and its sanguinary smith, there was now a barricade through which a sword stuck fast, humming like an angry hornet.

Every vertebra in Jack's spine came crawling up his neck. He stared at the blade under his nose until his eyes nearly crossed. That was . . . too bloody close!

With one hand, he grasped the pommel of the gently quivering sword. The vibration stopped, leaving the sword distressingly steady. Gripping the hilt with both hands, Jack tugged.

Nothing happened.

He tugged harder.

The bar and the door rattled, but the sword stayed driven into the wood. Jack added his full weight to his efforts, jumping up and down in increasing frustration, trying to break the slender strip of metal free from its oaken imprisonment. However, Lady Luck was having nothing to do with Captain Jack Sparrow this day.

He was going to have to find another way out. Jack turned and surveyed the only obstacle to that goal. The boy stood by the forge where Jack had left him, looking insufferably pleased with himself.

"That is a wonderful trick!" Jack exclaimed, his smile as insincere as his enthusiasm.

In a jangle of broken chains, he retraced his steps to the loading dock and strode onto the cart ramped and blocked against it.

"Except, once again," he pointed out, "you are between me and my way out."

Swaying with studied nonchalance, he descended the sloped bed of the cart. If it let him shake the wobble out of his knees, who was to know?

"And now . . . " Jack smirked in satisfaction as he drew his cutlass with a sharp ringing of steel against scabbard, ". . . you have no weapon."

Alas, what Jack had taken for nervous glances over the boy's shoulder turned out to be no such thing.

The young blacksmith lunged for the forge and drew forth a sword being heated for some small repair. The air in the smithy sizzled with its fire as he brought it up to block the pirate's blade.

The donkey took one look at the glowing metal, let out its frantic, rusty-gate bleat, and began charging around its circle again, setting all the gears in motion.

Jack knew exactly how it felt. The scar on his arm twinged in phantom pain. It did not matter that he knew a red-hot blade would have no strength against tempered steel. What mattered was quashing the utter revolt of all his nerves and sinews that wanted to join that flea-bitten donkey. Somewhere inside his head, a gibbering madman was flailing in frantic circles screaming that that was molten steel, and there was no way in hell he was going near such a substance with his flesh ever again.

Jack ignored the ravings of his brain. He refused to acknowledge the fact that the sweat-dripping heat of the forge was now ice in his blood. A slight widening of his eyes was his body's only betrayal.

On the other hand, now was not the time for heroic stupidity. In the space of a heartbeat, Jack Sparrow desperately scanned the room, seized upon a plan, and dived for refuge behind the great central shaft that turned the gears.

* * *

TBC


End file.
